Forums are a fun way to waste time, and not really anything else.
I have never seen any discussion of real value take place on a forum, and that does include this forum. Maybe the odd shaft of light breaks through the fog every now and then, yes, but just take a look at the topics. almost every one is a retread of a retread of a 'Why don't people like Halo' or '[X Game] is soooo underappreciated' thread. Even if a thread asks a thought-provoking question, 90% of the responses are going to be one sentence long and have no thought put into them beyond a gut reaction.
Escapist members are, for reasons unclear to me, some of the least impelled I've seen to take part in an actual discussion, and will generally not involve themselves in a thread any deeper than leaving their sentence and ignoring everyone else's. I have rarely ever seen an actual discussion longer than three or four responses take place, and most of those are just flaming or masturbatory disagreement about liking or not liking a game.
Escapist members constantly tout the forum as having some of the most intelligent members on the 'Net, and I find this self-stroking notion hilarious. Escapists tend to be more intelligible than members of a lot of other forums that's true, but a fatuous, narrow-minded fanboy is still a fatuous, narrow-minded fanboy regardless of how well he understands a subject-verb agreement. It's commonly observed that a lot as people become more educated, they become more able to deftly express and defend asinine, shallow ideas, but not really any more able to form more complex or insightful opinions than if they hadn't bothered, and I think the Escapist is a massive example of this thesis in vibrant action.
An argument between two close-minded genre purists on the Escapist is not any more intelligent or philosophical than the same argument taking place anywhere else on the Internet, even if it is expressed in more fanciful language, or if the contestants are forced to contend with one another through clenched teeth rather than with open hostility, and variations on this kind of argument accounts for roughly all Escapist forum content.
I'm not saying the Escapist doesn't have a good forum. It's far more friendly and open than most other forums, but as I said at the beginning of this post, it's just a fun way to kill empty time. This isn't a bad thing. Just adjust your expectations accordingly. If you want genuinely intelligent, deep, personable discussion about your hobby, well, that's what friends are for. Or, failing that, Shamus Young's website, Twenty Sided.
