None of these points make any sense to me when I think about the pre-reddit internet. There were all kinds of communities everywhere on various forums across the internet. Some forums discussed specific topics, some very niche, other forums were for more general discussions. But hosting and setting up a forum was not always the easiest thing. So when reddit came, subreddits eventually replaced forums. Easy to set up, easy to discover, everything in one place.
Now the fediverse is to me pretty much like going back to the old forums, but a bit more organized. And all of the points in this article could have been made about forums if you decided to analyze forums as one big thing. But in the end, none of it has been a problem (and there are still some forums around today).
I have that disk too. But I don’t need it if I want to install and play the game today. Same with my Elder Scrolls Online disk or my Assassin’s Creed Unity disk. Neither GW2 nor ESO will even play with just the data on the original disks, forcing updates before becoming playable. Not sure about ACU though.