I can't see the 4 pages under preorders. Are you still doing the top 200?

I like the "new" hot topics, but it feels disconnected without the list of threads I've posted in to give a complete overview. Good to see some old features return!

The text box is not recognised by my HTC Desire in the forums bloody annoying as I love it otherwise unlike the Apple guys I also get all the flash kewl...NOT!

Also on the Vgchartz home page using IE8 the right click open new tab does not work but does for most other areas of the site not sure why. What is bizarre is the last page link does work in the same section does work.

Also as of today the recent forum activity info on the GamerConnect has gone missing.

Don't know if this has been asked but... can I still use the graph tool on Vgchartz? :p   I wanted to graphically compare some games and I don't find the tool .... don't tell me it's been removed and never will come back :S

Well, I'm extremely pleased by the return of ban reasons and also quote notification.  But although I'm sure ioi has his reasons for moving Hot Topics I emphatically disagree.  (It probably has to do with making the "Activity Feed" more prominent, aka boosting the social networking aspect, I suspect; but I disagree regardless of his reasons.)

On the hub, the text is much smaller and therefore harder to read compared to the way it was.  It also just looks more cramped due to the organization, which likely can't be helped at the hub location.  The only improvement IMO is the little thumbnails of thread creator avatars, which are nice.  Also since I refresh Hot Topics fairly frequently it will be annoying to have to wait for the extra content on the hub (compared to GConnect homepage) to load which I don't need to see -- and then scroll down. 

Of course having to scroll past it increases my exposure to the other stuff, which may be ioi's goal, but it is in fact at the expense of user-friendliness and he needs to remember that.  He may be willing to make that call, and I may be willing to suck it up, but the more times he makes that decision the more people are going to stop coming. 

[edit:  I get that putting hot topics on the hub makes the GConnect area with its threads more analogous to the GFeed area with news etc., but that doesn't mean it can't be on the GConnect homepage anymore!]

Oh man I just remembered/noticed: 

On the GConnect homepage, I could refresh and see the latest hot topics and check to see which of my recent topics had new posts.  Now, that requires two separate actions. 

Yup, it's stupid. Now I can't see the new threads since I only stay on GamrConnect....

Did he give a reason, and do you care to speculate as to one?

The Hot-Topics section is not showing for me at the bottom of the hub page on Firefox. I'm not using adblocker or noScript or anything.

Is anyone else having this issue? It works fine for me on IE.

I don't think it is at an all time low.  Using the graphing tools on Alexa certainly shows a rather steep decline for this site though.

In mid 2008, which is as far back as Alexa will show, the site rank was around 10,000.  There was a positive trend until early 2010.  The site peaked in late 2009 at about 4,500, but the average around that time looks to be at about 6,500.  Since about the end of the first quarter of 2010, the site has dropped back down to where it was in mid 2008.  Actually, it is a bit lower right now, sitting at around 11,000 recently.  So basically, all the gains this site made from mid 2008 to early 2010 have been erased in the last six months or so.

EDIT:  11,000 is not an all time low because at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2008, there was a brief drop to around 22,000.  I'm not sure why.  The reason for the recent drop seems more obvious...