I'm going to throw this logic-y puzzle out there and see what kind of flack I get for it.
A) This forum/game/restart has died out already as it was directly competing for time/resources/interest from key people working on the new estate system.
B) This forum/game/restart has died out already because we got too crunchy and lacked story or any real reason to keep people interested.
Either A is true, B is true, both are true, or neither are true.
If A alone is true, then we should see a direct increase in activity over the next few days, and ideally, this lapse in interest should end up as just a blip on the radar. I don't really believe this to be the case (or at least not the sole issue). I believe Tom's had to split his attention a little, which maybe has slowed things down, but shouldn't have directly been the cause of this project dying an early death before it even really began. So the "both" option may be in play here.
I also don't believe that "neither" is true, though I could perhaps eventually be convinced that it was "both" but with other factors involved.
Here's why I think that the major factor in play is option B. Namely, we've done this before. From what little I know, the original SM2 didn't fully get off the ground, despite upgrades to code and a startup storyline concept. And I know for a fact that our little resurrection 5-ish years ago had a good little startup group of at least 10 people I can think of off the top of my head (and that doesn't count a rare appearance from Dethargos). That attempt had discussion and banter about how to do the spell system, but flowed pretty well for a few months on RP alone. Characters met, faced challenges, ran from the witch-hunters, and learned how to cope with/manipulate their spells through trial and error. What ultimately killed it was when discussion came up that we suddenly needed a coded spell-system in order to continue (which really wasn't true). To the best of my knowledge, this was one of the very last SpellMaster threads ever created/posted in on the old SM list.
What am I trying to say? While code and system is important, this game seems to have always been mostly about freeform interaction between players. There's a "combat" system in place for when conflict occurs, but outside of that, it's not a necessary evil. I feel like after the initial push on here for concept, story, and character, all discussion and focus shifted to what should've been one singular aspect of the game- the engine. And what happened 5 years ago (and possibly with SM2) happened again. Everything died out.
Don't get me wrong here- I spent a few years (including most of the time I was away) doing crunchy things like designing pen & paper systems full of stats, combat, and dice rolls. I love that type of thing. But I'll be completely honest- as soon as we started getting into those nitty-gritty number crunching stats here, I stopped paying attention, largely. I've submitted only one spell, refined it a few times, and last I checked it still wasn't accepted (which means little really, except that there are character concepts which likely are unplayable with this system, and that's fine). And it seems that after the initial flurry of activity and excitement that comes with build-your-own-anything systems, it would seem that most others have also hit the wall (or the ceiling) on what to do next.
Can we try to build a world and some stories together and pull in the engine as we go? It seemed to work for FEI and sort of for Dwilight. They're at least still alive and sort-of growing. I don't want to see this project die already.
