To host a forum u'd normally pay 1 year up front.

Fact is, normaly the Larians always come through with their promises. But you can't denie that the promise that they'll inform us in the coming months is long past due. Also, Larian Studios is a small studio, and they recently announced that they sold ketnet kick too some tv-station in the UK. And that probably consumes alot of time, leaving no time(?) for Divinity 2.
Also the inactivity in this forum is mainly because no content is being released.
I really hope they don't release the game after only a short time of releasing content, a game needs to build up a hype to sell well.