Newbies certainly come to this forum and think that this is old fashioned. But you will get used to it, and it is much better than new fancy platforms like reddit (i prefer this forum UI).
This is basically just outright fact at first it seems kind of geeky or nerdy like I mean who still fancies the SMF forum UI? But the fact is that's what makes this Forum unique. It's interesting that pages loading up easy, no cache or having to deal with viewpoint issues since this forum fits in any device from my mobile to tab and even pc.
I would love to see this forum stay as it is for as much as possible. I didn't like epochtalk UI.
Basically it was fancy like newer websites like Reddit and many others but with that much UI comes more bugs and vunerability let's not forget the forum admins were quite confident here that there is a bounty for being able to buy a few things out here.