IMO this confirms that blues don’t read the forums.
So after sacking 800 employees, of which a vast number were community-facing roles, they want to cheap out and get players to play those roles for free.
Here is one thread that Ion requested feedback and promised resolution more than 3 years ago, still without any resolution;
without any action.
Why should we believe that anything will change with a smaller fraction of people that post on the forums, who must link at least 3 types of online presence just to be considered.
This will just create smaller forums that will be read-only for players, with post functionality only available to a smaller more elite group of players.