why should that mean this project is dead? Maybe tru would be willing to work on it and finish it even without the forums? It's not like we "turned our back on him", that's not what a ban even means. All it is is his way of socializing disagrees with ours; he may get along very well in some other web community, it just happens that here isn't that place.
For all we know he could be more active at AGN from now on and continue to work on this quest on a quieter scale. I'd be disappointed if the ban cancelled this quest, even though I was only mildly interested in it.