> Felt like the old guard had been established and the forums I looked at were dominated by a couple of posters who just wanted to talk, but not discuss anything.

I think this is the case for most places, I'm afraid. I use mainly Discord - there are certainly a lot of servers where I'm purely because I'm talking to people I met there, and I don't even play that game anymore.

There solution is simpler - after time we create private servers or channels for the old guard, but even then the places deteriorate.

It's a thing I don't know how to solve.