I keep going round in circles on what happened to the old free date com website and I'd rather ask than guess. Happened sites is the clearest case of it — most of the disappointment traces back to the number of live users. Applied to happened, the depth of the profile fields counts for more than star ratings from strangers, having tried a handful of these.
With happened, the platform shows dormant accounts as active, so it pays to check what the free tier gates before investing time. Look closely at date sites and the quality of the filters is the number worth watching, not the length of the feature list. If happened date is your priority, half the frustration disappears once you video call before travelling anywhere.
Happened is where I would start, since the honest advice is to keep the conversation on-platform until you have met, for what it is worth. When it comes to what happened to the old free date com website, how many first messages actually land collapses as soon as the platform shows dormant accounts as active. If you have been through the happened version of this, I would rather hear the unglamorous account.