History time.
I don't think anyone wanted both games to coexist in the first place. It wasn't advisable because the COH community was already small enough, and somewhat dying already due to mostly everything that Relic did since OF, except maybe patch 2.3xx and 2.6xx. OF brought a lot of tech improvements but the armies were a disaster until 2.301. Then ToV was even worse, and we had an insane amount of time before the next patch (2.6x family especially 2.602) that was great but unfortunately came a bit too late. Worth mentioning the balance wasn't even that bad most of that time, it was just getting stale. Another issue was the hacking, it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, but still too much for Relic to properly handle (75% of it because of old tech, that COH2 solved).
My hope back then would have been for COH to die really, and COH2 to replace it entirely. This would fix most of the issues, get all the old players in, and bring a ton of new players as well, on an improved game with hype and evolved tech to make more and better competitive events.
If this wasn't for that hope, this entire website wouldn't exist at all. It was fully build on that idea, it started with and for COH players only (COH2 didn't exist yet back then).
When COH players realized COH2 was entirely different, it was already too late, the mindset and hope was already there, and the rest was disappointment after disappointment since it didn't match half of our expectations and COH went through a lot of shit before landing on Steam (and even then).
I believe this is the origin of why COH players don't see COH2 as a good (or neutral) thing, or don't accept it just as a different game. COH2 is the game that could have fixed most COH issues and do a lot more, but it failed to replace it badly, and took all of Relic focus during all of those years, instead of improving what was/is the most competitive game of the two.
If we had known before hand, probably here would be a COH only website. Or a site for both. But we clearly pushed for COH2 only to rally the community instead of splitting it. This was probably the best idea if the game matched the expectations. But it was a pretty bad idea (for both communities) in the other case (which unfortunately happened).
Now we end up with no place to go for COH and an almost dead community but most importantly all the issues with the game are still remaining. The sad part is that they are mostly tech issues and balance issue, the core of the game being still vastly superior. Most of the tech issues are fixed in COH2, and others could be by just getting some care from the dev. But even if they did at this point, there's no hype around the game and the community is too dead/split to go anywhere. A community requires people, automatch requires people, successful events require competitors and (most importantly) viewers.
So now we have COH fanboys on a COH2 site that is otherwise very fine in itself. Most of them have left at this point, but some are still remaining. They came here in the first place because the site was build by them and for them. I explained why they don't like COH2. I'm not sure why they stayed here, probably each his own reasons, which I would be curious to hear.
My personal reason being obviously that the entire website was my original idea (more than 2 years before COH2 was released or even announced, it was truly my COH love that originally pushed anything), site which I imagined, designed, developed and maintained still to this day. Obviously I wasn't alone in that journey but this is a bit off topic, more info about that on
the about page for those who haven't read it yet (while I'm at it we should definitely update Janne credits for major contributions there). I can probably make a whole topic of that (or any) kind of history if there's enough interest to motivate me.
tl;dr for me COH is dead and that was the goal ! except coh2 should have been replacing it correctly and that part failed. Maybe there's hope in few years for a COH:HD like AOE2:HD. All COH needs to be back to the best RTS on the market and in our heart is tech update, hype and support. Btw AOE2 HD has usually more players than COH2...