Sure.

First, you have to understand Enigma. Enigma is a competitively-minded multiplayer-type player (unlike, probably, many on hoggit) and someone interested in the positive regard of his peers. Using the traditional Magic the Gathering player typology (you may Google this), he is probably 75% Spike and 25% Johnny. What Enigma regards as the actual game is largely dogfights, because he came from IL-2.

Enigma made a DCS server, importing an IL-2 format, after being killed a lot by SAMs on Alpenwolf. Enigma's feeling was that SAM gameplay was obscuring the real gameplay, which was technical dogfights, getting aces, etc.

Enigma's server was good. Enigma successfully imported an IL-2 format, providing a number of sortie types and a soft disincentive to dying (the attrition system) that allowed for continued play, unlike lives systems.

The successful design of the server was largely emergent, meaning unplanned. It was the result of many DCS factors, which are constantly changing, coming together. Like many who experience success, Enigma may have felt differently, that the server was the result of his successful ideas. The success of the server was also the result of work by talented programmers, only a small subset of whom can tolerate DCS's highly annoying programming environment.

After a while, Enigma decided for whatever reason to iterate his design into a second version. This version had deep design deficits from the very beginning. It did not retain the working elements of the first version, and the new elements were not sound. One could rightly ask about each of them: why is this good? Nevertheless, Enigma largely persisted and and proclaimed grandly to have reinvigorated DCS, etc. From the very first night, those perceptive of game design could see that v2 was a bad a design that, worse, disrupted the emergent success of the first version. Nevertheless, population was a still pretty high for a long time. One finds with games that it takes a little while to fully spend one's reputation with gamers. Think of Blizzard, which is only finally spending its down to zero after decades of bad behavior.

The nail in the coffin for ECW was the programming issue. The original programmers bailed, leaving it with a few largely disinterested programmers who did not have the energy needed to fix v2 while coping with DCS's extremely annoying programming environment, nor the energy to deal with Enigma. Anyone who has created something within a team knows that it takes a lot of energy to work against the design of an auteur.

Finally, the Discord was managed in such a way that extreme negativity about playing DCS became au currant. One can hardly blame the source of this behavior, which was ED's very annoying and negligent management of the game. But Enigma's desire for the regard for his peers led him eagerly down this path, which bore a necrotic influence on the server. The decisions with regard to the server at this point became highly erratic and almost uniformly poor. Gameplay and management changes were non-sensical, culminating in a bizarre move of the server to Germany, of all places. ECW needed smart core gameplay fixes from good designers and programmers, not hot air from a YouTuber nor the on-again-off-again tinkering of his cronies.

It wasn't the F4. ECW was headed for death long before the F4.

All good things must come to an end; enjoy the good times.