Yeah, the section has been need in renovation for years, but short of that, we've been using the MaNGOS section for everything that isn't Ascent/ArcEmu. It works out pretty well since the majority of cores common here are based off of MaNGOS (or Trinity which is pretty similar to MaNGOS).
The section really hasn't been big on coding of custom cores either, or much about core coding at all. It's always really been repacks, core and DB releases, as well as general help on setting up servers or fixing database issues.
It sure has died down in recent years. I remember back in '05 when the section was highly active. These days, not so much. We have Blizzard to blame for that. They made it so much more difficult to emulate the servers, especially when they started randomizing opcodes with each new patch. Back then, there was Antrix, WowoW, Ludmilla, Kobold and Blackstorm on top of dozens of smaller projects. These days, the only things worth watching are Trinity, C-MaNGOS/MaNGOS and Skyfire.