I have to wonder why people's memory's are either
1. So forgetful...
or
2. Different than what happened.
The golden age was definitely when AD&D hit its fad in the early 80s. Then everyone played...or everyone who was anyone...at least among the youth you could say. It was a fad much like any fad which hits the huge numbers that give major sales and everyone wants to jump aboard.
Problem with fads...once they are past, they are VERY hard to recreate for specific items.
So anyone who states the 2000s were the golden age...WOW...just WOW....
It's like calling now the golden age of Pokémon compared to the late 90s and early 2000s...or like comparing the amount of water in the Great lakes to the amount of water in the Atlantic ocean. Granted...there's a TON of water in the Great Lakes...especially if compared to your local lake or most lakes in the world...but compared to the Ocean...not even comparable.
The 2000s may have been a silver or bronze age for RPGs though.
3e also lost a LOT of AD&D players. It had a very significant shift (I'd say an even BIGGER shift than 3e to 4e). The reason was because the internet, though big at that time, was nothing like it is now. Many people who played AD&D were still playing 1e...or were playing core 2e rules. They never got the player's options or any other books, and most did NOT go to the conventions (and most still don't go to the conventions, believe it or not). These changes came from nowhere for them...and it was a much more significant change for them then anything we've seen since.
HOWEVER...there were a TON of those who were playing other games, had moved to other areas of RPGing, who were sick of 2e or even 1e, and a whole lot of splintering. 3e and it's D20 push DID unite those who were left (IMO!!). It isolated a LOT of the old gamers (and many of those are what you see today behind the OSR movement...and even behind some of the other more innovative RPG ideas coming out these days)...whilst bringing back a LOT of those who had left...and I think there were a LOT more of those who had left and those who wanted something new or different (the new shiny) than those who wanted AD&D or D&D (the older versions). Hence 3e was originally a great success (once again...IMO!!).
But there's a heck of a lot of difference between what I'd term as the Golden age...and what we might call the Silver age of RPGs.
For example...when people talk about RPGs and the current (2014) military it rather confuses me. Some research (which unfortunately I can't share here) seem to indicate that whilst a great majority may have been playing in the early 80s...currently there is less than 1% of the military playing RPGs today. That's still a large number (for example, the US military I think is a little greater than 1.4 million, 1% is still greater than 14,000 personnel that play)...but is nothing to number seen previously. I remember one store we visited (more looking at OTHER sales than RPGs, but it was there) and it appeared that though it was near a base, and they had several hundred customers...only a couple dozen were actually from the military base which was nearby composed of around 12-13,000 soldiers (which obviously is even less then the 1% I just said...but that was just for that base...and who knows...maybe others got their books elsewhere, went other places to play...obvious things like that).
It doesn't seem as if there'd be enough numbers in the military to really notice an impact of an edition war inside the military...per se. Then again...maybe they are more concentrated in other areas...or they know how to find each other and that's where the arguments went?
However, the 3e/4e "edition wars" actually seemed rather tame comparatively to arguments between players in the past from what I've seen. perhaps that is because there are NOT as many RPG players as a whole (to me, it would seem the community has shrunk and continues to shrink...but this is NOT due to any research on my part recently...but my perceptions).
I'd say the bigger risk to D&D and AD&D (and perhaps even to Magic and other games to that degree) is that the audience is shrinking, slowly, but steadily. Hence it's not just fragmentation, but a shrinking of the audience. It's not just a struggle to unite such an audience, but also to sell more to those that still remain to buy items (and by shrinking, in some instances it's also relates DIRECTLY to those who are willing to buy or consume more than those who are playing).
Another part of the success of the 2000s I'd say was increased awareness. AD&D was dying as far as sales go, at that time with a slow but steady shrinking of the audience (once again, not directly those playing, but those buying). There was a burst of items that suddenly increased awareness among key groups (for example, the Baldur's gate games probably were the start for many a kid into D&D). 3e and D20 made it easier for those to get into the RPG market simply because it was the new thing and not loaded down with over a decade of bulk.
What I think is more pertinent isn't whether there is a scattering of gamers (and I would agree with other sentiments on the thread that basically state, except for early on (though I would add in the golden age of D&D into that) but what will be done to reinvigorate the brand. I don't see any Neverwinter Nights, or STRONG (as in a really strong line like it used to be...you still have best sellers in the FR, DL, and D&D lines...but Salvatore isn't releasing as many books and some of the more big name authors are now writing for others [such as PAIZO] at least part of the time instead of being steady TSR/WotC devotees) entertainment lines that have D&D as the only outlet.
That's all part of the advertising and such...and that probably has me more worried about the D&D brand than what people are calling fragmentation...at least at the moment (who knows, I may have different feeling about it in a few months!).
