This is bad, bad, bad. And I mean that in the most polite way possible because I know things like this are not free.
Reason 1: Too complicated. Yes the UBB forums were old, but they were popular and because they were old, they were simple. Go look at any of the most popular websites on the web. Simple=better. More buttons, more options, that's all great for savvy users, but most people don't want to take the time to figure it out. Now we're talking about all these options: Show sigs, don't show, show pics, don't show, show white skin, show black skin etc etc...
Well what if you're selling something and you have a picture of it and the user doesn't know how to turn on the show pictures option, or never even thought of it? What if your sig brings you alot of traffic but new users aren't showing sigs and aren't even aware of the fact that they're missing something?
Is every user really expected to go turn on and off a bunch of options and to be aware that they need to do so? How many people start messing with options as soon as they arrive at a website? None that I know. What you see is what you get on first arrival, and it sounds like they wont see half the site and therefore wont get much of anything.
Reason 2: TWV. It was the cornerstone of markee trust and it seems to have vanished; or at least accessibility of it has become more complicated. And what is this "review" that has replaced it? I see reviews for people I know are not MD users. Can I trust these people? How do people get reviews? Are they TWV? Are they verified in any way? How does this new system work? Do we all need a tutorial?
Reason 3: Traffic. Or I suppose, lack-there-of. I have seen plenty of websites do this and it always ends terribly; there is too much going on too quickly, you are hemorrhaging members. First the markee forums move. You lose some people, but it had to be done and you kept most of your members during that move because all that changed was the URL. Then the forums were dead for maintenance the past 2 days, no doubt losing some members and anyone new. Now the URL has changed AGAIN, right when people were getting used to the other one. And worst of all, the entire forum has changed, the rules have changed, and anyone who browsed markee here and there would be confused as to how the hell any of this new stuff works or what any of it means.
These forums have more options, but these kinds of forums are made for being, well, forums. People come and talk and share pictures(if they turn it on of course

). What markee was doing was something entirely different, and it made sense that their forum was entirely different for that reason. Old, sure. But simple, and sleek. Easy for new users to maneuver through, and easy to understand.
It all seems pointless. Why move to a new forum? I have heard people say UBB was old. Who cares if it was from the stone-age, the point is...it worked. It worked very well. I'm confused as to why anyone would change that.
Yes it's only the first day, but giving it time wont change much unless there is a whole change in direction...which seems rather doubt-able.
Change for change's sake never works. And if the reason for this drastic change was really "UBB is old," then that is very disappointing.
Sigoftheweek.com was the most popular sig design website on the entire internet. One night,reveling in their success and wishing to go even further, they decided to give it a new feel with new skins and new options. Everyone lost interest when the old site vanished. Sigoftheweek.com no longer exists. I hope the past is not in that terrible and usual habit of repeating itself.
P.S. On that whole light dark thing. Make dark the default and do not expect everyone to through and change it themselves. Rather than leaving light as the default. Just like the others, I am getting a headache from looking at this, it's like staring into a blizzard. :/