... Did you send a ticket asking whether your old account was archived?
And I don't think it is just the game getting easier (Note: I'm not denying it, read further). The first grind has always seemed to be nightmarishly long to me compared with later grinds (which was before the easy mode really kicked in), which is most likely because I was learning the fundamentals of the game alongside with trying to level up, instead of just doing the latter.
Getting a decent crew these days however is almost comically easy. The mountains of freebie-giving events and exp boosts really helped making the game less P2W, and coupled with the amount of event ships (especially the BBs) these days have made grinding a lot more fun and less frustrating on a whole.
FYI I started playing in 2007 and have been playing on-and-off in recent years.
