paigosa: Life *is* roleplay.
Back on topic, people once lamentented the fall of bbs, aol and countless others. Someday, even the all powerful facebook and twitter will shutdown just to make room for something shinier. As to the loss of the valuable information contained within the bioware forum, such is the sad but inevitable fate of everything on the net.
As an aside, I can only wonder what archeologists a thousand years from now will think of our modern utopia when they uncover the archives of 4chan and youtube.
Cavalary: Will there be archives to uncover?
And nothing people do is inevitable. Darn few things not having to do with what people do are either, in fact. Some are even working on that little niggling matter of death.
Given their apparent lack of caring about the forum, I doubt they will show any interest in releasing it to the public. I agree they *should* but I wouldn't count on it.
Edit:
As to the inevitability, the bioware forums are owned and operated by bioware and are therefore at the mercy of bioware. What do *they* gain by the forum? When the time comes for them to merge with someone else, why should *they* go through the trouble of also merging the two forums? Why should *they* go through the all work when facebook, twitter and whatever comes next are already trying to do the same exact thing, albeit in an even less tasteful way? Someday, (hopefully) far in the future, the same will likely happen here. It's just business.
If you wish to create a public forum free of the evils of corporate greed, I'm all for it, but it will be far from easy and farther from cheap.