I've been a player of GC for over a year now, and sadly it is not the same experience as it was back then - so I can't imagine how an even older player must feel.
Suggestions in the channel for it on their Discord server go largely ignored by staff, when it comes to improving things like the slowed economy, game and class rewards, or further adjusting the rarity rates in shops onsite. If not ignored, it isn't always a productive conversation and nothing is said besides it's being worked on which can be frustrating. Those already existing issues were worsened when they made referral codes renew much faster, without fixing the reported problems prior. Site lag/slowness has always been an issue, which was also worse after this. Despite people saying they'd love to donate for a better server to help with this, it's refused in favor of coding to try and help.
It is much harder for a new player to make NP now compared to when I joined, even. Those lucky enough to have gotten in early are wealthy onsite, yet will try to nickle and dime you on trades (speaking from experience). Game and class rewards were great for the longest time, and then they nerfed them; some favorite classes no longer worth taking. For games, even featured ones, you'll more often than not end up with mostly codestones - despite many pleas from users to adjust this.
Their token warehouse feature is nice, and lets you do things that you can't on regular Neopets; such as paint alternate colors, get more inventory space, and name pets with special characters. It is easiest to get these tokens in the beginning, and cost scales as you buy them. The most popular one gets you a pet slot, with the current cap being 300. People are mostly trading for names these days, as opposed to colors.
The community has lost a good bit of its charm, again because of needed changes not being made. Problematic users are not always dealt with appropriately, and continue to cause issues for others, making it feel like Site Team vs Users at times. Again, many suggestions and escalations have been made by users about this (and wrongful freezings) to no avail.
While there is a lot to do in terms of dailies, collecting, restocking, etc I would have a hard time recommending this site to others at this point in time. You need NP for a lot onsite, and it is just not that easy to make it now. GC is a few years old, so up and down cycles are expected, but it's not being alleviated in any way and it doesn't make me feel hopeful.
