"Back when I started playing there was no community"
I'm sorry but that's just... false. Maybe you weren't aware of it, but even in the Beta there were already mods. I myself started playing in 1.0 and played until around 1.7 and basically all the playtime I have was playing on servers or modding the shit out of this game. (Back then you actually needed to do that manually, as mod launchers weren't a thing)
So I'm still a bit confused as to why you are frustrated, since noone is forcing you to play the new vanilla versions.