Yes and no I guess. First let's realize that the game in question ran for 8 years so there was a lot of history and that's what killed the game.
Lets take a current example. Chris's game with the moonstones, he's not doing anything wrong, it's just a game experience he has in mind and the player's have another. This is how it started with me, I had an idea and it didn't align with the player's expectations. This plus bugs, logic errors and bad admin choices became problems as time went on. Like a scab the community kept picking at them. We ended up taking the game off line for a few months and came back with a fresh start. All the forums were wiped and we put in the game news this was a new start. But of course the players of old still brought up old stuff and would relay that information to new players. In the end it was better to just pull the plug then go on reliving the past.
As I said we had a very strong community, to strong. We actually had to player gatherings and even that was cool but helped destroy the community. People met and then fought in real life and they brought those problems back into the game.
I learned a lot running that game, back then places like this board didn't exist those few of us that made games on the internet were the minority and we had almost no one to turn to, to ask for advice or bounce ideas off of.
It was a different time and the lessons learned were hard ones
But yes a community can kill the very thing that brought it together.
