As Dagmar stated, Renegader and I are more than happy to listen to your suggestions and feedback about the site. And there really are a wealth of ad blocking add-ons for you to use if you do not choose to upgrade to premium membership. We feel the XenForo platform gives our users the best experience for a forum of this nature, but as was stated, it does cost money to maintain the server itself, pay for the traffic and all that.
In response to your initial post though, I honestly don't know of any other good 3rd party forums. I've been on the Bethesda forums a few times to try and look for solutions for our members here but I've never posted there. I've also searched on Nexus for the same reason. But I've never posted on either of them to my recollection so I can't speak to that side of the experience for either of them.
I know places like IGN and Gamespot offer forum interaction. UESP has a forum and there's the Imperial Library for more lore-oriented conversation.
In response to your initial post though, I honestly don't know of any other good 3rd party forums. I've been on the Bethesda forums a few times to try and look for solutions for our members here but I've never posted there. I've also searched on Nexus for the same reason. But I've never posted on either of them to my recollection so I can't speak to that side of the experience for either of them.
I know places like IGN and Gamespot offer forum interaction. UESP has a forum and there's the Imperial Library for more lore-oriented conversation.