Jon has pretty much said everything I think about forums vs Discord. I also want to link this blog post (and some comments) that goes into a bit more depth about the problems with Discord support. It’s from the perspective of a company offering developer support via Slack, but I think it applies pretty well here too. The benefits of forums are not necessarily for the individuals who are asking questions and giving support; they are for all users, many of whom you will never interact with because they just saw the answer and left.
It seems like the core issue here is synchronous vs asynchronous communication. It sounds like a lot of people including Maisie are more comfortable with synchronous support, and that’s completely understandable. It feels faster and more personal, and it just feels nice to actively help a real person while chatting with them. However, I believe that the long-term benefits of asynchronously answering support questions here on the forum, such as building up a public knowledge base of questions and answers, are more important than the speed and convenience of Discord.
Finally, I observed the opposition/arguments that happened on Discord soon after the forum was announced, and it was clear that the strongest negative reactions to the forum were coming from the Support Helpers. It was probably a mistake to start the forum without first informing them, but a discussion between them and the devs to hear and respond to their concerns could still be helpful. There are probably some technical things that can be implemented to make the phase-out smoother - maybe a Bandwidth command to prompt someone to ask their question on the forum similar to the piracy warning?