As I mentioned in another comment, they likely forgot the purpose of the daily stand-up, which is to have everyone be on the same page everyday. If they're doing that without a daily stand-up, then fine, but it's usually quite difficult to do in teams larger than 2-3 people, which may explain why they lost the value when they stopped doing it.

It's not hard to do the daily stand-up and there can be many ways to make it more of a team building experience. I use Improv with the teams I work with (see: http://ow.ly/dOmJJ)