Thanks for providing access to the database.
I can see some options in the XF1 database which seem to be related, but they are from an add-on. The default new user welcome option is switched off, and you must have been using an add-on to provide this functionality. I'm not sure what the specific reason for that was, perhaps you had the add-on before it was a feature within XF.
I'll reply to your ticket with the relevant information I can find in the database. My recommendation is to enable the default XF feature and plumb the add-on's data into the default options.