I wonder if this is a correlation with how shit the forums getting
Apollo - I think the points system and clan listing page are the causes for this. People seem to think that having 200 people and being the 'top' of that list means something. So we have spam invites, lotto games, etc just to get higher on that list. All these extra people in clans leads to extra trash talking, stealing clans, etc. And since they are so large, there is no structure to most of them. Most of the crap on the forums is clan drama really. Sure, there is a decent amount of OT stuff too, but I think that is because people just got used to massive amounts of clutter on these boards.
Even if some of these vets were still here it would not matter. These trolls would not listen to them anyway. But I do think the forums being in a gutter have probably pushed the vets away from the site in general. That and the coin games (because some only play those now). I wonder if Fizzer realizes how these new features (points and coin games) impacted the rest of the site.