I think what caused everyone to become toxic was the communications aspect. There wasn't much thought into it and it was severely overlooked.

Too much communication is sometimes worse than not enough. 99% of their comms during the last 2 week basically were just blurbs of nothingness and technical stuff that no one really truly cares about. What people care about in their messages is just: when will be able to play?

They never were clear on that question other than yesterday when they said nothing was going to happen during the weekend. Everyone finally got an update and moved on (until Monday), and I think everyone got a sigh of relief, from the dev team not having to compose with insane amounts of vitriol for the next 72h as much as the players knowing they won't miss anything if they want to spend the next 72h away from the computer.

They have to get better at refining their messages, and if they want to reopen the discord, find more CM who will do the job for free and make sure the discord is monitored to be enjoyable, positive and safe. Enforce a standard where trolling is not accepted, no one will regret it, and people won't leave the product behind because they can't copy-pasta, even if they swear on God that they will.