For me, it was Forkgate
Krank stepped down and fork took over and ritsu (I believe) sent a PM to EVERYONE on top of an announcement exposing fork embezzling and deliberately leaving the site vulnerable. One of ritsu's friends even checked in on that, found it absurdly easy to get in
And then they shut the site down and they took so long with the same excuse, they lot a loooooooot of waiting members
Including me

Tho I do remember having extra of their buyable currency and talking to someone who wanted an item that was out for said currency but no money so i got them one (I already had one) and sent them a trade. According to them, when they saw the trade, they fell off of their bed
Whoops ovo
That was back when the site was still all nice tho

Man I just dropped by Syndrome. Just to see what it was doing right now.
And apparently it's dying a slow bleed-out.
Plus all my Dyes were reset. And my Avi was gone.
The whole site looked way off from what I remembered too. :}

Oh my
Yeah, I have an online friend still on there and I'm gonna try and convince her to join Windlyn, KofK, or both syn dies

Yeah. I read some of the announcements, guess the friend will need a new place soon.
Try getting them here. :}

Oh, they all mention closing or sommat?

Well that was just it. They didn't. As in They very seriously used a lot of phrasing indicating that there would be no more adding to the site.
To the point there was one stating that the site was left to naturally decline and would in time possibly be offered as open source coding for somebody that might consider his or her own Syndrome Site.
But no actual announcement stating a closing.

Seriosly all I got was that Syndrome is down but refuses the count. :}

Pretty much they're gonna close once either they run out of money or everyone leaves for good

That is what I understood of the thing, indeed.
Sad as Syndrome had the making of a great site.
Now I'm just glad I didn't invest more time in it. :}

Was it an avatar site or a pet site or both, or what?


(I like your "Wait and see" conclusion, Kitalpha. Sound advice. I'm going to take it.)

Yeah, kinda sad that it's dead but when shit hits that fan several times...
Or just shows up in an endless stream as "LINE OUR POCKETS" spam you can't block like gaia