The EP forum was originally just a society forum and was not abandonned. It had big crash/got wiped. At that time pple as shifted to here already. Therefore they chose not to start it up again.
You are totally right.
I am well aware (oh..., i was no friend of PCF at all! I am so sorry for the loss of my beloved EP forum!) of the root cause about EP forum, but a TL;DR explanation wouldnt have changed my argument.
In the end it doesnt matter why player content got lost.
In the end only the provider has the (man-)power and resources to support the necessary contents long enough.
And then it is also a clear indicator when to abandone a project.
In the world of business it is an early sign of several to come, before a closure of a business, when the company can't uphold/maintain certain infrastructures any longer.
It is a variety of signs like
- the offered product gets outdated
- money return takes longer and longer
- R&D get reduced
- "non-essential" spendings get cut like
- customer support gets cut
- communication gets reduced
- customer feedback gets ignored
- product criticism gets censored
- you know the
list...