Ain't THAT^ the truth.  I enjoyed the hell out of WoW when I first started playing. . . had some IRL friends I'd hook up with, made some in game friends after awhile, enjoyed grouping with random folks when they weren't available. . . the whole nine.  But as expectations changed for the rest of them, and all I wanted to do was quest and level my guys, nary a party to be found.  People were all too busy cornering the market on brilliant shards and crafting Dragonscale armor to sell for gold to buy a legendary weapon.  What the hell they needed it for, since they never went out and DID anything was besides the point.  Sitting across the table from a group of guys, united in a common quest referee'd by a real GM, has it all over the fractured, stat-driven wasteland of MMORPG's.

I'm finding that my story isn't an isolated one; a gamer in my teenage years in the 90s, I dropped out of the hobby for a long time, only to get back into it in the last couple of years. I think that the online gaming community has something to do with that. I've also been able to connect with great players through Meetup and to be honest, while FLGSs may be dying, being able to get games as PDFs has revolutionised my consumption. Where local shops only stock the big names, I'm now able to hear about cool stuff online and have it in my hands in minutes. Also, I think that age has brought me to a place where I'm more into the idea of proposing to new players to come along and join in, and I have a couple of new prospects for my next campaign. If it weren't for adult life curtailing gaming time I'd be running games weekly. As it is I'm lucky to get a game in every month. But I can get the methadone of talking about gaming online, which is something. If I were to make the leap to online gaming through Roll20 or whatever I could be gaming several times a week. But I'm not quite there yet. I agree with those who've said that gaming is changing rather than dying ....