I joined these forums only a few years ago, long after Konami abandoned the series, but the reason I started posting here to begin with is because I use to frequent this site a lot as a kid. The turning point for me as a Castlevania fan was when I finally tried Super Castlevania IV for the first time. I loved that game so much I wanted to delve deep into the rest of the series, and this website was the best source of information. I wouldn't post here but I would occasionally lurk, and I do remember seeing how active the community was back in those days. I also remember how frequent page updates were, as new Castlevania games were coming out consistently. This site still remains my favorite source of information on the series, but like everyone has mentioned here, this place was so active because there was so much to look forward to and talk about back in those days.
The same thing happened to one of my other favorite fan sites, Shining Force Central. It was a thriving, active, website with a huge forum community, but pretty much everything went straight downhill as soon as Camelot stopped working with Sega and the Shining series morphed into something completely unrecognizable to the fans of the series. I consider Shining Force II to be my favorite game ever, so I frequented that community very often, and I have a lot of good memories of those times, but Shining Force as I knew it is long dead. I actually tried the demo for Shining Resonance on the Switch and all it did was remind me of how the Shining name has been repurposed to sell games that have zero relation in any way to the classic Shining games.