zombie84 wrote: 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.

Care to explain this idea of business dealings?

From the information i've been privy to, the only connection between tf.n and LFL is a handshake and personel access. While attempting to preserve a public record of forums.starwars.com I was chatting with the boards.theforce.net folks and that place was having difficulties creating their own backup, in case of a catastrophic mishap. They've been gifted housing and some server stuff for several years past their initial agreement. It seems as if they are finally getting into migrating to a new system or provider. But I haven't heard if LFL was part of helping out that deal.

The continual shut down of starwars.com is partly out a businesses desire to cut staffing and supposedly antiquated systems. What they fail to realize is they are also destroying their fans participation. The blogs are the latest piece to 'insert cliche here'