I found WAR online about a year before launch; oddly enough because my boys found my High Elf army and books and were super excited to play it so we jumped online to find more figures for them.
I played heavily from beta until around 2011, was quite a bit after most of my rivals & friends quit due to failure to fix bugs and put in new ****. Most of them went to Rift, a bunch more went to SW:ToR, then GW2 pulled off a few more.
I think a lot of what killed WAR was the false promise, I mean way back in the beginning, talking about putting in the other cities and actually reaching the potential that WAR had, but it just never happened; that kinda set things on a downward spiral. After years, Folks started realizing that there wasn't ever going to be new content, wasn't really going to be balance fixes, that EA was putting its money into SW:ToR instead - they gave up knowing it would NOT be what they wanted.
I know a lot of them were angry about the changes that 'were' made, because it was sending the game 100% down a zerg fest path and they were not looking for easy rewards, they wanted the actual PvP. I never quite stopped loving the game (though I will admit some of the patches damn near made me rage quit) but without decent rivals the game got boring for a solo player like me.
Now that WAR's gone and folks have seen the 'next generation' of PvP games, (zerggy 'carrots on the end of the stick' type games that usually focus on PvE more than PvP) they're realizing that WAR is/was (still) one of the best PvP games out there. It has some flaws sure, but it was not nearly as bad as present offerings for the supposed new generation of "PvP" players. I mean I enjoy the mechanics in Rift, SW:ToR, Tera, ESO, GW2 even, but it's just not WAR...
I think a lot of us who have been following "the resurrection" have hope for WAR going back to it's true roots as a great PvP game. And I think even if there never is new content, a lot of us would still play; like one of those classic games that you never quite give up despite everything else 'new' out there. (Solitare, Majong, Civ for me) I'd love to add WAR to that list
...and wall-of-text... Ya know back in the early days of WAR's launch I was known as the queen of the wall-o-text. Ah flashbacks...