I’d say “no” to both, but YMMV. They struggled with the launch (their server wasn’t able to handle the capacity, but they eventually upgraded it), and they are only providing minimal updates and some critical fixes. As far as I can tell, they haven’t added anything new. I don’t think Fawkes Games has the resources to make the game much better than it was.

My own personal experience is that it doesn’t crash too much (like, maybe once or twice out of 10-15 hours of playtime). Sometimes it could be server-side or client-side or network related. Best place for updates (ie. to check server status) is their Discord. There’s a subreddit, but, I don’t know if the devs participate or not ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Defiance/ ).

You can play for free, but, there are some limitations (eg. inventory space) that you will come up against fairly quickly. They have a the standard store thing where you buy in-game gems for real money and spend that on stuff (like inventory upgrades). I can’t remember what the costs of the original game were. But, with how they have the game set up, you definitely can “try before you buy”.

Yes I did. I think the original release version, as well as the 2050 update

Playing the revived Defiance game (by Fawkes Games). It’s not a very in-depth mmo, but, it can be fun

He also wrote (in the non-fiction 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World), “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”