I played off and on for a while. I eventually lost interest, and I'm not really in any hurry to go back. The community isn't particularly impressive. Creating my own nation was fun, though, especially considering I set the politics completely opposite of my own. The Shining Empire of the Solarian Isles was a theocratic nation ruled directly an Emperor who was believed to be the living embodiment of their supreme deity. There was also a very strong racial supremecist element to it. Over the course of the game, I played three different Emperors, and a short Communist interregnum after a revolution, each government with their own politics. When I left, I put a very reactionary Emperor on the throne, closed the borders and ejected everyone of half or less Solarian decent, then ignored it until it autodeleted.
My WA delegate was fun to play, though. He hated the job, and held everyone else in disdain. He was sent there to get him as far away from the capital city as possible. None of the Solarian governments I RPd considered the WA important enough to send a proper diplomat.
That's the fun part of the 'game' making your own nation and letting your imagination off the leash to create something you are proud of, a world of your own within another that you can bend at a whim to make some really cool content. However, if you spend a lot of time on the forums the community will make you cringe with generally terrible RP, manners, and demeanour in general. Also worth mentioning, the admins there (at least when I played about six years ago, can't say now) are insanely biased.
I'd say, if you spend time on the forums at all, only really stay in the factbook section to document and show your work. If you want to do some interactive RP, find a friend from Disco (An established Disco RP group there would be interesting) or one of the few really good RPers on those forums.
I generally stuck to the factbook section and the WA, the rest just wasn't that good. If someone goes ahead with a Discovery group, I'll consider dusting off my nation.