Welcome back and yes, Nex is pretty much dead I believe. As I found myself in the same situation as you, and first thing to do is to know the significant changes.

Gamma Island
Player Owned Structures
Distress Beacons
Mission Tokens
Revamped teleport map
Industrial Changes
Terraforming
Dynamic Ore Spawn (No more static ones)
Other stuff..

Alliance/corp to check out:

STC
M2S
AIG Alliance (NRDS)
     -AIC
Etc etc

Im guessing your a blue (numiqol ) player, so base around hersh or any of the green islands unless theres a corp willing to accept you.

Edit: If you hate commies, then dont bother going near nova unless its for pew pew

Yeah i think it was NEX since i remember you being a corp manager or whatever.

Ive only had time to quickly hop in and see my EP stash ect so i havent looked to see whats going on and if theres any activity ect.

I remember corps being rather difficult to get into though...that still the case?

Im hoping the game isnt too void of life im stuck here for like 90 days on each account lol...

Ah those, just came back last week so cant remember all the new changes at once.

Yeah its good to be back.

Oddly im most excited about the dynamic ore spawns, despite seeing a lot of negative feedback.  Its going to add exploring to my game plan as well as giving me further reason to keep my combat account near by.

A little disappointing to see the starter terminal, at least the green one being void of life though, was hoping all the new stuff added would bring more new players.  Still plenty of new stuff for me to work towards which is good.