I'm not sure the cause for not going to a real forum system (phpBB, vBulletin, SMF).
-Could it be a space issue on the servers (would take up much more)?
-Does he not want to give controls to mods (trust issue)?
-Not a priority (more important things to implement)?
-Not enough knowledge (hasn't really used advanced forums enough to know what to do)?
First of all, those 3 softwares aren't very good and aren't very modernized without heavy use of plugins. IPB is seriously the best and is the only one I would recommend in a professional setting.
1. Space issue isn't very large considering he's keeping all game history.
2. This is fully customizable on any forum software.
3. Probably.
4. They aren't that hard to figure out, it's moreso keeping up with it rather than the setup. If the setup is an issue I can help with that in no time.
I always assumed that Fizzer doesn't like the idea of buying forum software because he wanted to code his own and never really intended for this game to take off like it has. It was probably a money issue as well at first. Implementing and using forum software to the full measure will require a community manager who has done all this before (I have, and I'm sure there's other people in Warlight that have worked in that field before). What I mean by that is integrating Facebook and Twitter and keeping up with that (the tedious part). Otherwise I fully recommend IPB and maybe the updated phpbb (though it's not as elegant). It is really easy to use that software and get it working the right way.
I would actually find it exciting to get a forum software integrated with this site. It's been awhile since I've been able to do that.