For those (such as myself) who play a lot of 4x games and grand-strategy games, the closing down of Explorminate is definitely something of a blow. It's not the end of the world, obviously, but it was really nice to have a "one-stop shop" where fans of the genre could get their news about new & existing games, plus converse about them in the forums.
Personally, I haven't really found that anywhere else. We mostly discuss only wargames and tabletop games here at ACG, Strategy Gamer is tainted by its association with Matrix/Slitherine, and the other place simply isn't an option anymore.