I haven't played seriously in years, but I've put about 50 hours into a new character in the last two weeks.

The good:
* I can go anywhere and rarely have to worry about being PK'd
* Everybody I interact with is pretty decent and fun to talk to, I don't have to go far to find people to role-play with. I don't get ignored for being unknown, basically.
* A bored imm was messing with me while I was spamming skills to make sure I wasn't botting and it turned into a mini-roleplaying session with a reward involved
* Solo ranking with mercenaries is actually not terrible experience

The bad:
* Getting explore/observation experience is a lot harder now since my old run-through areas can only be done at certain points in my gaming
* I have tons of explore/obs/commerce exp and still can't choose any edges except for the basic terrain one everybody gets for hitting 25th level.
* Trying to improve my skills/spells is horrible still. The skill gains are so, so dismal I keep feeling like I'm doing something wrong
* Trying to stockpile coins is still rather painful at medium levels since the shopkeepers are drained of funds pretty quickly and you have to go WAY out of the way to find the ones with money
* Finding a group when I want to level is really, really hard unless I'm around during peak hours on a good day
* Even with a declining player base, the good limited equipment is still hard to find since it is being hoarded.
* I have been walking around for the last week with role entries that probably would have gotten me 1500-2k imm xp in the old days, so far there's been nobody that noticed it.

I'm sticking with it for now, mostly because of nostalgia and I had an itch do some area writing again. I honestly don't think CF needs any new areas though, I've been trying to wrap my brain around ways to expand the game while making it feel smaller at the same time. And finding new area types that make people want to play longer and login more often (and not just to power-rank or get new gear) is sorely needed too.