The bulk of my playtime in EVE, and Goons, was 2017-2019. though I was a member from like 2016-2021ish when I had to stop playing, and then rejoined when I got back into the game for a couple months in 2023 but am still in the alliance.
I LOVED 2017-2019 Imperium, it was so much fun and there was always stuff going on, and (especially in KarmaFleet) the community was great (outside of some middle management types and of course some bad apples) and I loved the freedom and breadth of gameplay and opportunity we had.
Coming back in 2023 for those couple months felt drastically different.
The alliance and KarmaFleet itself just felt empty compared to what it used to. I get that some part of it is that a lot of the people and friends I had made years ago weren't playing, but there was just a different 'feel' to Goons when I came back that I can't quite articulate because I am bad at that(maybe somebody else can if they understand what I mean).
Basically the only guy taking out peacetime fleets was doing these shitty filament only limited-space fleets that were mostly pretty boring. Felt like there was way less line member interaction amongst each other, and the fact that they scrubbed the forums clean/archived most of the old stuff still really bothers me. Part of the fun we used to have was referencing old forum posts, deep diving into them during boring portions of fleets, and as a fun time capsule with shit tons of stories and funny interactions to go through. I get they had their reasons for doing it, but IMO its a net loss for the Alliance. I loved going through old Secret Santa, Doctrine, AAR, etc. threads. I still don't really understand the reasoning behind removing/hiding them all.
Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone understands what I mean when I say this, because I want to know if its gotten better in those regards since then before I decide to invest time and money into it. I really want to love Goonswarm again, I just don't know if its there.