About forums -- to me it hasn't really changed that much. I used to run (non-music related) BBS systems back in the days of the Atari 8-bit, then MS-DOS based forums in the early-mid 80s, and we had things like CompuServe, The Source, etc. where vendors would create discussion forums. To me, not much has changed except the way we access them.
Funny but true story... Back when I used to run one BBS, there was a screechy voiced 12 year old kid who would dial into my board every day, and incessantly ring the sysop chat buzzer to chat with me. He was a bright kid but could be annoying at times (actually I was kind of a kid too, I was only a little bit older than him). I talked to him on the phone more than once (dont remember why, probably computer troubleshooting stuff). His handle on the board was Dave the Wave. We never really talked music, I didn't know he was into it.
Well, he grew up to be Dave Dresden of the famous duo "Gabriel and Dresden", who are considered two of the most successful North American born DJs/producers of electronic music during the last decade. He even kept the name "Dave the Wave" as a DJ!! I really like some of their work, I think they split up for a while and did solo projects and are now back working together. I did not keep in touch with Dave but I'm quite sure he mellowed out after puberty
As far as where the Virus is headed, I'm really not sure. I would like to see them come out with a mega-powerful Virus that really justifies the price point and breaks the current polyphony barriers, but the TI line uses dual Freescale 56321 DSP processors, and to my knowledge Freescale hasn't even made a more powerful chip, so it could be Kemper is waiting for a major advancement from his chip supplier before he can provide a major advancement in the Virus line? I'm only guessing here. It could be a potential challenge, for example, to fully utilize a third or fourth DSP and still retain backward compatibility with existing Virus patches. I don't think a non-backward compatible Virus would do well these days against a softsynth market that has evolved tremendously since the Virus line (even the current models) were introduced.