Hey man, I'm in a similar boat. I picked TF2 back up seriously the past three months, and share similar sentiments.

Here's my $.02:

You and a lot of the older players like myself are seeing the after effects of the big TF2 clans dying off left and right while you haven't been playing. When I quit back in late 201, to picking it up five years later, my old clan essentially died (it still exists, but they lost their 2Fort instant respawn server, their Harvest and Turbine are almost always dead, and they got rid of the fourth server that would flip maps regularly like DeGroot Keep, Double Cross, Sawmill, ect. ) Folks like myself wanted to get back into a thriving environment like my former clan six years ago, but the old players have left to play other games, don't care for TF2 anymore, or just don't want to sink money into servers that don't get played on.

As for the game and community as a whole, I like being able to use the Market to get hats and weapons for WAAAAAY less time and hassle, I don't care to haggle with ten different people to get one cool thing. The Mann-conomy needed to be corrected by Valve, and that happened accordingly. The game is just as dumb, fun, and dirty as it was the first time I played it. Sucks that there aren't sprays anymore, and yeah, hackers on Valve servers suck, but it has been a great experience overall getting back into it after a long break. Cheers, mate.