I think there's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said about old-school forums, or general purpose forums. I think I could only give support to you, and hope you bring back purpose such as the MVPs you used to host.
You did a pretty good thing when you integrated the gaming forums into the main site and allowed guests to post. I remember being run over by guest spam back in the day, because I was on more often than the other Admins.
I would like to show you something though.
Last year we had a guy named Samgladiator sign up for one of our forums. He's a 1 million subscriber YouTuber, and wanted a place to send all of his subscribers. He was looking for people to sign up for his role plays as actor / builder/ writer positions. While he had his applications open, things were good. The following screenshot only shows registered users;
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx....573949A4 Things were good so long as his forum had purpose; actor applications. As soon as he closed his applications, his forum died down. They became general purpose. Yes, they're still incredibly active, but nothing compared to when they had a specific purpose.
I think eventually you'll find a good use for these forums. Some way to target a specific audience.
EDIT: Your image tag could use some work.
« Last edited by Forgoten_Scars on Jan 24th 2016 »