TSQ: I understand that sentiment. We definitely have been talking about it for some time. However, it never was a real priority & there was disagreement over whether we'd stay with phpBB or move to new software. We all decided that it's going to be our main priority and that we'd stick with phpBB about mid to late last year.
Since then a lot of progress has been made.
took initiative & made significant progress porting over a lot of the most difficult modifications(like isolation & private topics). I've recently joined in & am working to pull other people back into activity. Regardless, we know what features we need & we'll continue to chip away at it week by week. It'll take some time but it won't be years and years.
I'm happy to keep people updated as we progress. It'll be exciting when we get there because it opens the door to a lot of other cool projects due to the new extension engine.