This topic reeks of rose tinted glasses, glasses which conveniently forget the upheaval every edition change of D&D has courted. The difference is that the internet has exploded the number and variety of quality RPGs on the market (the number of sub-quality RPGs has also gone from simply immense to truly uncountable). There's more forums for edition wars than there were in the past, and there's also a massive batch of people who started pretty much with 3e and don't remember the history substantially before it.
Anyone who thinks the heyday of RPGs was the mid 2000s is woefully ignorant of history. The heydey was in the 70s and 80s. It's been a slow decline ever since.