It was "hyped" because it was an exchange for the small coins, it was easy to get to it, was easy to register, was fast and never scammed people unlike it's main competitor Yobit, which scammed a lot of people, freezing coins, never paying them out (suspending markets for years without allowing withdraws). That's what people liked cryptopia, it's still a better exchange than Yobit but the staff is too small to operate it smoothly, at least during the december boom, now that a lot of people left, I think it should run well (didn't really use it this year), considering how many coins it has listed (1700 markets), think about that first, it's not easy to update/manage hundreds of coins with a small staff and small income.