I believe they didn't close forever. It's most likely a DDoS or some software/hardware changes made, because I see different behavior of the site (Ranking for example; sometimes login is successful, sometimes it's not
) and forums. I can even sometimes load the game with no server list in it. If they were closing, I don't think we'd have access to our accounts in the site. After all what's the point of them being there as no one will buy any PP card while the servers are down.