There are plenty of other software that works really well for forums, Discourse is a controversial one, why pick that one over SMF, PHPbb, or vBulletin?
Vbulletin is dead.
Xenforo would have been far better.
Because DatCourse is rubbish…
It was just an example…
We wouldn’t really know what kind of talk went on behind of scenes.
But citing free forums and a dead forum, they weren’t good examples. Free forums just don’t have the type of commercial, rapid response, support a commercial project requires unless CCP employs their own coding team to watch over it at which point they might as well develop their own.
Xenforo and IPB have the capacity to meet CCP’s needs but they are defined as traditional forums.
While Discourse, Vanilla and such forums are defined as Web 2.0 forums and reacts better to mobile devices.
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They picked it because it was the worst of all the options that they offered. They jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon thinking they are all cool and hip and with it.
Except they aren’t and shouldn’t aspire for something so inane as Web 2.0.
edit
This “forum” was also designed for questions and answers, not for actual forum debate - hence why it has a “Solution!” option.
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As I said, just a few example, good or not.
There are ways to make any interface a web 2.0, even traditional forums software!
I personally find that Discourse and Vanilla forums do good when there are little needs for large amount of categories. It’s good for general chit chat.
However, Eve forum requires a large amount o categories and then sub categories. It was a bad decision in my eyes.
And, aye, you can make any traditional forums look like web 2.0 forums but maintaining the templates over the course of a forum’s life isn’t easy.
Not easy, but they are paid professionnal, I think maintaining the game is a much bigger challenge than a forum template. 
True, but it’s about allocating manpower.
As I said, if they were going to invest heavy manpower into a forum, they might as well develop their own. I can’t quite recall, but Eve’s first forum back in 2003 was their own? or it was a heavily modified one. They ditched it, citing manpower required to maintain it was too much.
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CCP is known for going for the new and/or controversial?
Just a guess from their record of game development and market choices