Also gonna fall on the side of 'guild is not dying'. I first joined in 2008 or so, and some may recall a 4-day crash in '09, I believe. It may have been '08 but the point is, a lot of people didn't come back from that. Considering the actual fall wiped the guild out for a month, knocked the guild out from Google a bit, and we're still getting oldcomers coming back once in a while, I'd say this is pretty decent. A lot of people were lost, to be certain, but the Guild itself seems to continue to exhibit reliable activity in the main rp categories. I'm not sure if it's more than before the fall - since, keep in mind, some people had to restart rps and were also testing the guild's capacities and trying to reunite with old buddies at the beginning which may have inflated the average post count. It's hard to be certain if the guild's still doing well or is merely stable but failing without that data to consult.

That said, I sympathize with those who miss the BBcode. It was used frequently with reckless abandon, but it could also serve as a useful medium-painting tool. Sentences could be hidden, as opposed to merely struck out. The GM could depict the speech of a gigantic monster in a different, sharper font and even colored for increased contrast. Others with faint whispers could switch to smaller text (admittedly, I had a character who constantly sounded as though he was speaking through a muffler, and used smaller text to depict that he'd be hard to hear at times, without needing to constantly retype that his voice was so quiet, so you can accuse me of bias). Different font could indicate some quality about a voice that was simply off without rehashing the same adjectives or abusing a thesaurus, while using the default font could indicate a voice expected from another person. I've seen several books and rps using such effects for impressive results and won't fault anyone wishing to emulate them (a few literary examples: House of Leaves, The Neverending Story, 1984, Harry Potter). I won't be leaving the guild over the loss, but it's understandable why some may miss it.

I also can't help but wish Mahz would allow others to help. I understand why he would be reluctant, but it seems the issue that comes up most regarding the guild's survival is that complaints aren't answered fast enough and Mahz, who has to hold a job among other responsibilities of his own, can only dedicate so much time to his work and to debugging a site he effectively wrote from scratch. Pretty sure the members here are a patient bunch, but they (myself included) need both a responsive admin able to fix bugs and for Mahz to not suffer a mental collapse over the guild. Allowing for help either in the form of a reliable secondary debugger or donations could be workable solutions.