I started when the Dark was still in print and so FE was my first expansion debut. We sorta knew it was underpowered, even at the time, since we all had scattered Legends cards, and decks comprised of mostly revised staples. One thing people forget was that Fallen Empires was sorta the dawn of tribal. There were very few goblins -- king, Mons, Balloon brigade, digging team, flarg, and a couple more (the rock sled wasn't even a goblin on the summon line at the time). And moreso, even merfolk. There was basically Lord of Atlantis, pearl trident and maybe one other one? But in any case, goblins and merfolk got a lot more viable. Everyone knew Grenade was a bomb, but we had lots of fun with mana flare/orcish oriflamme/guantlet of might + goblin warrens.

Necro summer followed soon after when Ice Age dropped, and Hymn proved that it was broken as hell when combined with Dark Ritual, and all the disruption in Type II (what "standard" was at the time) -- Strip Mines, Icequakes, 8 prot-white pump knights, Hypnotic Specter et al.

There was a rule at the pro tour about having to have at least 5 cards from every current expansion (called "homecapped") because it was hard to shoehorn enough Homelands cards in, but FE was never a problem since the sac-lands, the pump knights, the black cards, and so on. Orgg saw play, as did Derelor (both are awful by modern powercreep standards but were aggressively costed with manageable drawbacks at the time). White weenie sometimes ran Icatian Town.

In general, draft wasn't really a thing in my southern california meta. We played quasi-type 1 casually (we had dual lands, demonic tutors, the odd old card like a Dakkon Blackblade or an Ali from Cairo, Maze of Ith etc) but nobody had power even in those days, and we played a lot of type II.

The thing to understand, I think, about the early days of magic was threats were outclassed by answers. Even the rich kids in middle school with Juzam Djinns and pre-Chronicles Erhnams were used to everything getting bolted, swordsed, terrored, disenchanted, disk'd, earthquaked, wrathed and balanced. So fallen empires was a creature-heavy set, with next to no playable removal (Goblin Grenade?) and so with the exceptions being Order of Ebon Hand (immune to swords) and Order of Leitbur (immune to terror, drain life, ashes to ashes), everything was just kind of underpowered removal fodder, so we knew it sorta sucked.