I have avoided VIP chat for a long time already, and I am not missing anything.
The foul language, bullying, personal attacks (especially from certain players (formerly) from a certain high profile alliance), endless alliance recruitment spam messages are not signs of a healthy VIP chat system.
Fundamental problem: no moderators.
TBH the chat system itself is pretty dire, it is so low tech and pretty easily the least developed/worst feature of the game. The alliance/friends/social implementation is also quite terrible… I’ve given feedback before but I guess it is a super low priority Suggested List of Improvements
At least they have cleaned up the Free Gold spambots, but in my opinion… that is not good enough.