I saw games going down because of bad decision making. So while a forum represents a some part of the playerbase it is not drawing a good picture of the demands and necessities, and most of the time some people who scream the loudest in the forums don't always represent the main part of the playerbase.
A great idea would be some kind of wishlist, where players could post ideas and demands, and others could just upvote them without having to express their approval in a post, but by one mouseclick.
So the devs actually get a better picture of what people want to change (bugs, balancing or features) and adjust their priorities to please a bigger part of the players.