Yeah.
I was involved in that community from the beginning, and tried to write quite a few storyworlds over the years. The one that saw the greatest success was ironically the one that was cut short when my collaborative partnership fizzled out, but several months later I polished it up somewhat and released it as a rough, unfinished, and certainly flawed sample.
I think the two biggest problems were lack of advertising and awareness – the forums never had 1/100 of the population needed to be self-sustaining and vibrant – and, as Chris rightly identifies, the difficulty of using the authoring software. It’s an incredibly powerful system, with features and functionality that make certain aspects of writing interactive stories incredibly easy and that I’ve never seen anywhere else; but working with the idiosyncratic and finicky interface more often than not made SW design a massive chore.
I’m disappointed and sorry about the fate of the software, but honestly not surprised. I wish it could have had the marketer and interface designer it deserved.