As others have stated here and in the past multiple times, I as well would love for it to return; though maybe in better terms.
i think it'd be fine if general came back, the game is more subdued, at least, in terms of the sheer number of people playing. i do get that it's pretty rowdy at times but rowdiness will find an outlet, and like queen said, most people are all in one place anyways [guilty as charged lol] so i think it'd be fine either way.
the thing is, i have a feeling if more of the playerbase used the forums, we'd have a lot of group recruiters plugging for it to come back. maybe not, tho. i do see a lot of people these days putting out adverts on the forums and leaving up a discord link which is a lot easier than making people say, tinyurl to join a group they might not stick around for. it's kind of always been a bit of hassle to advertise on this game, general or not, because if you're going for a professional [map/discord/site/whatever] thing, you can't put in links and either have to trust people's ability to copy a link or tinyurl it.
it's not that much work, but it can be a deterrent, at least imo.
could swing either way. i'm usually distracted enough as i play that i don't mind either way if the green comes back or not.
I used to like general chat. It was great for maps like Fluorite Planes and Ficho Tunnel because you could be chilling in your own spot of the map and still be in on the discussions. There were flaws of people typing things into general that really belong in local, or just abusing the function, but I think that would be minor now that it's a smaller community of people.
Many above have brought up that it's almost not necessary to have a general chat because everyone clusters in The Grounds, and that's understandable. I haven't gotten to play FH much since all the old maps were removed or changed. But, the few times I have, I found it to be pretty lonely to explore the maps. Especially since my friendbase has moved on from FH. Once you leave that cluster's reach in local, the chat gets pretty quiet.
Beyond that, I remember how touchy a subject it was when general chat was removed, so I feel a bit shy to ask for it back. But maybe it would be nice to have with these new sets of maps. Or maybe I'm an old dog that hasn't figured out how to finesse the new culture of the game lol vwv