The Stench is heavy in this one....

[Grant Green]

The problem there is that you had half the people using thread view and the other half using topic... those with thread view complained that you didn't start your reply in the subject line while the topic users complained that they had no idea who some posters were replying to since they didn't use the quote feature. The end result was a jumbled mess.

Topic view is so much better. There is a reason why no one uses thread view anymore.

Actually, I think Rivals switched default format to topic view to try to keep their premium content better hidden. I think that is why people don't use thread view anymore. New users came in and were exposed to topic view by default and never saw thread view.