This may sound like typical non-PT-fan cynicsm, but I do honestly believe they shut down the forums because they essentially took over TF.N. That site did lots of business with the official site and had lots of cross-talk and business dealings. TF.N was always better respected and more popular for their forums, so I have this suspicion that they just decided to jump into TFN for the fan-oriented extensions of the site like blogs and forums. Of course, I have nothing to prove any of this, but I know they do business together and it would certainly explain the "direction" both sites have been moving towards in the last two years.