In the meantime may i suggest to group offline contacts together (contacts > sort contacts by)? You can group them together no matter what sorting method you prefer. This will avoid confusion as to who is online and who is not
I'm not colourblind but yes, i did prefer the bigger buddies and the white for offline aswell...i have no idea why they made offlines darkgrey. The buddies were fine as they were in the first beta, all it needed was a distinction between "away" and "busy".