Wotmania got away with a lot of things because it was decrepit and ancient, running on a 1998 code-base created when things like avatars, in-post linking and so forth was (relatively) advanced and technically challenging to implement. Things have moved on since then.

That Ben puts huge amounts of work into this site and should be thanked for it is not in question. But this premium option is definitely not the only way forward. There is no logical reason at all why a site with this amount of traffic should not be paying for itself via advertising. Since it isn't, there's clearly a problem somewhere that needs to be addressed. Charging people for basic functionality shouldn't be the first plan on how to do it.