You joined here didn't you XD

Yes and no. It's still possible to keep doing things the oldschool way and participate in conversations on your posts and other people's posts and go through the tags and whatever else you were doing before. Communities is just a quicker way to find people with similar interests/have people with similar interests find you.

And I've also found it much easier to manage my feeds as I can follow people I really want to keep tabs on and usually get through it in a normal day, and then branch out into the community feeds when I have time (which hasn't been much lately x_x).

Sounds like you have quite a bit of material coming :D