Durrrr trying to get more action from Isildur, lol.
The Isildur situation did not help HSP as it highlighted that several guys at the top are very cosy with each other and will work together to study and break other players. So if I sit with Durrr/Hastings/Cole/Townsend/etc today and win ten buy-ins there is a decent chance that they will spend the night discussing my play, data mining or trading hand histories, etc. I would view this as a deterrent to aspiring nose bleeders as well, who wants to take on multiple superpros at the same time?
On the plus side, for the ego driven they saw how much attention they can get in a very short amount of time. Isildur probably could have turned this into a FTP contract if he was more business minded like many of the "rarely play, but always blogging and around to show their face" professional nose bleed players.