You might want to double check, I see people on your friends list just fine. If they show up as offline, then that's what they are; or they signed in as "show offline", or they're ignoring you.
In any case, seeing as the friend-list feature has been working for 2 years and hasn't been changed recently, and you're able to get back into your account I consider this closed. If you still have troubles, you will need to take it to the support tickets.
-closes subthread-
