What's crazy about this, is that in most businesses, losing all of your staff overnight would be fairly devastating, but wouldn't be the end of the world (hire more staff). Losing all of your customers overnight would be more devastating, but again, recoverable. Losing all your products overnight would be very devastating (for example to fire or theft), but that's what insurance is for.
Tyler lost all 3, at once, and the customers are the product. There was no budget for staff, there was no insurance for the product.
If the site had splintered into a bunch of small, shitty communities, then maybe, in time, everyone would reconvene back at NeoGAF down the road.
But a better, newer, feature-rich, secure forum emerged and welcomed Tyler's community en-mass. And did so with almost no hitches, downtime or drama.
It was a perfect storm and Tyler's hubris bit him in the ass so fucking hard. Can't say it didn't happen to a more deserving individual.