And thank you hobo for being around so I could remember a real clan tag to look up,
here is CoreNA, several members with that steam name, plus the entire clan that you can look and find people in.
http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=corenaej1.jpg
Yeah, but that's a list of people in a Steam group. Not a list of people in a particular server. Imagine if I'm on TS with EvilHobo, and we're both ingame on a different server. Hobo says, "hey, join my server". Doing this with the old buddy list would be easy, I would just add the CoreNA tag. But now, I have to:
1.) Alt-tab out (because I don't like having Steam in-game enabled, annoying popups etc)
:Yoshi: Can turn off popups and notifications in system settings of steam
2.) Sign into Steam friends
:Yoshi: Can set this to sign in on starting steam
3.) Right-click on EvilHobo (assuming he's on my Steam friends list, which he isn't, so I have to add him first)
:Yoshi: If they are ingame, should have an arrow you can left click that pulls down the menu(so you can bypass the right click part) I know same step, different button, just felt I'd point it out.
4.) And click "Join game".
:Yoshi:See step 3
5.) Hope that RO doesn't crash because it's loading a map while I'm alt-tabbed on my desktop
:Yoshi: Don't alt tab

See step 1
... or I could join him through Xfire. But I'm not sure if that works while alt-tabbed, I don't think so.
Not exactly user-friendly, tbh. You assume that everybody likes Steam friends. And you know what they say about assumptions...
:Yoshi: Never assumed everybody would, however many people do ( not including the vocal majority here, once again we understand this)
I'm sure it's possible to bring back the wildcard search / old buddy system in RO, though.
:No, no it is not without bringing back up a UE 2.5 master server as the steam master server does not support this. If Steam Master server ever does support this or a similar function I'm sure TWI will add back in the buddies list.
Clearly a lot of people don't like this change. If I were you, I'd reconsider this change of direction, or at least contact Valve about this.
:Yoshi:We understand that people aren't happy with the buddy list removal, but at this point it isn't going to change. You yourselves can also contact valve about feature improvements, they have an idea and suggestion list just like we do.
:Yoshi:-Note this has yoshi additions cause I was too lazy to quote- I know its not as easy, and I never said it was. I'm just saying the system in place support similar functionality, it just takes time to get used to it.