This might be considered a bit rude, but..

Could you give any indication as to the yearly costs of hosting this site?

Before reading further, please keep in mind that as a professional developer myself, I'm weary of the whole "Geez, how long could that take to build?" scenario.

FWIW, I'm the guy who added the Lurker icon on Wotmania's old chat, and assisted with a couple of other bugfixes, which means I've browsed the old source code. I understand that the code is neither moderen, efficient, or effectively maintainable from the whole "bring it forward" point of view, but...

..the functionality in use seems to be limited to user handling, the message board (and Reviews/Interviews which basically just link into parts of the board), Noteboard (private messaging), Journal, Polls, the Quote-thing, an RSS-feed, and links to webshops hosted elsewhere.

What sort of traffic do you have? How much data is there in your databases?

Again, not trying to be an ass! Just trying to figure out why someone would shut down a relatively popular site.

Also, I'm pretty sure I met you once, Ben.