I never liked vBulletin. The first time I wanted to make a forum, knowing nothing at all, I asked around and vBulleting was often mentioned. So I wanted to try it before buying an expensive license and used a nulled version to test on my local setup. Oh my God, it's amazing how I hated it. I really did. It's not intuitive, it's ugly, it's slow... I really hate it. Then I checked MyBB and thought.. wow, guys, you made something you're distributing freely much better than the paid vBulletin crap.
Sticked with MyBB ever since, I don't see myself changing to any other software. Haven't found a forum software I'm feeling more comfortable on, as an admin or as a user.

I don't know about the bad reputation of vBulletin, I thought it had a pretty good one actually. But if you are still hesitating, I would never recommend vBulletin.

I still think that vbulletin is the best forum software. My next favorite would be MyBB. I think they could have done a lot better with VB4.

I hope not, I don't like vBulletin, I would use ipb.