Running after OF is fun, but keeping it is not. Nothing changes, really. You can fill up some transport with ore faster a bit. You can't let every member fly a BS, so he uses his indie to do so. You have 100% with some ship, that would have 90% otherwise. It was all made to make just a slight impact on the gameplay.
What was really funny we lost with skype/discord groups. We didn't know who was logged when factions started, but if we saw our faction listed at players list - we logged into unknown.
Communications changed a lot, but OF concept stayed the same. There were world wars IRL when communications changed and other things stayed the same.