I guess I'll get serious for a second and post my 2 cents since these forums do still mean a great deal to me.
The reason I always loved this forum was because of the community. You recognized nearly every name and if there was a name you didn't recognize... hey look a new guy. I felt like I was making a difference in the Battleforum community just by simply posting and interacting in the threads. In hindsight I realize a lot of it didn't matter, but at the time it felt so important. I know many of you understand what I felt and this is what we need to bring back.
I have complete faith in Roach and JD, as they've done an outstanding job in the past. However, I have a couple of ideas I just want you to put some thought into. For starters, I don't know how you could possibly keep these forums alive if you took most of the gaming aspect out of it. As someone stated earlier in the thread, a lot of what kept BF alive in the earlier days just won't work now. For instance, being goofy in chit chat just for fun's sake died off years ago. People get that kind of entertainment from online games and official game forums now more than ever. Don't get me wrong, I understand that behavior still happens over here, but not anywhere near the way it used to be, simply because of the reasons above.
Now enough with the gloom and on to a couple ideas. First and foremost, I think it would be a giant step in the right direction for Battleforums to reforge itself into an "active community", meaning members are encouraged to participate in events or hell,
a clan. What better way to stimulate this already "gaming" forum than to create its own clan genre for certain games that in return, reward members for playing and participating (ranks, medals, etc...)? For instance, WarriorNation.net is a website that has thrived and been around as long as BF has. They run a very serious clan based site for pretty much any popular game you can think of, AND they have a huge following due to their way of promoting and rewarding active and skilled players. Take a look for yourself
Medals July '11! As far as getting the whole thing started, I guarantee you the active memberbase that BF currently has is more than enough to get a couple clans going for popular games (LoL, SC2, etc...)
Another suggestion I'm throwing out there would be something I think Roach was more pessimistic about in an earlier post, which is keeping up to date with news on certain video games. I'm sure there are people out there willing to take a couple hours out of their week to write their thoughts on a video game they are passionate about. I myself have been an avid WoW player since the game was released, have experienced all PvE content and been rank 1 in arenas. Writing my thoughts about the current state of that specific game once or twice a week would be nothing to me, and I'm just one person in this huge community. Hell, anyone could be a writer, and if a lot of people start to like a certain person's opinions, they'll attract a greater following, which generates more hits, more community, more interaction and belonging.
Give it some thought. I would love to discuss this further and give more thought to these ideas and possibly new ones if anyone has found what I've said to be relevant and worthwhile.