It’s a complete reimplementation on a new engine with big changes to the tick system, new versions of all the maps, animations, etc. Not too different to CS:GO release vs CS:S with big expectations comparing it with the previous version.
I use noscript and while normally I’d agree with you about the number of reqs to 3rd party domains being an inverse indicator of quality, I think in this case it just means the client application is marshalling its own connections to broader p2p system without a fancy experience api layer.
Well done creating this! Thank you so much too for opening the source after so much solo effort, I’ve read the high-level architecture document and the things you’ve built sound very interesting and make me excited to read the code.