Let's say you wanted to write an article, other then using wordpress integration, is there a way to, for example to write an article as a forum post and then breakout that post as it's own page or promote it to a designated stand alone page? Thank you.
I'd recommend you try it yourself. Basic Pages is definitely working in 3.2 so I see no reason why it shouldn't work (or be easily fixable) for 3.3. Make sure you install it in the applications folder.