Apparently had half a million unique IP addresses hammering the forum. Not sure if this is a DDOS or if it's a bot swarm gone awry, but either way, for the moment, it seems to be mitigated. Obviously I won't release details in case anyone is reading this.
If you hear in other channels of people unable to access the forum please do let me know.
At the moment, load seems much more reasonable, if still a bit elevated - but within reason for now.