Hard to say for me...   I don't know if I'd listen to them on a record, but I think they'd be fun to hear live!  Give me Rocket Queen and Estranged and I'm happy! I'd take Rosie and Nice Boys instead of Live And Let Die (not gonna happen).... or instead of nothing.

Love to hear Sorry, This I Love, or Scraped live since Chinese wasn't out in 2006 when I was at Chicago last time. But I'd give those up for Oh My God!

Don't care they didn't play new songs, would have liked any of the 'new-old' additions to the setlist like OMG.

I care the songs they played were not superbly performed. Usually while listening to November Rain you feel heartache and sadness, but this time, it was for a completely different reason.

I didn't compare much, you're the one that had a point that people hold it against entertainers for not being the ones who wrote their material. Obviously this isn't true.

So there's no "normal people wouldn't understand staying up to watch a band who didn't write the music they play"...actually normal people don't care/know the difference, they just like what they like. If there's a stigma, it's because they're an "old band", not because the lineup is different.

Earlier post -
GNRX was a great place. The original NewGNR wasn't too bad either. I avoided MyGNR because 1.) the forum software wasn' that great/looked like crap, 2.) it was lowest common denominator.

The last few years I don't know really how it got better or worse, but the pure volume made it important to check because things would hit there first. On the other hand, that was sort of a waste of time.

Anyway...

Seems like Eric's big failure was monetizing. There's a lot of ways to put ads in a forum. I've seen places that put ads in the place where posts are every now and then. 'Sponsor Message' and all that. He also did a piss poor job of making donating seem important. Besides seeing a few vanity buttons near user avatars, there really was squat. There's a way to be transparent without begging, if that's what he was afraid of. "Give the gift of MyGNR...to yourself!" donation drive around Christmas. SOMETHING.

But it's probably...
1.) It's expensive and not self-sustaining in terms of money or time, or energy that gets put in.
2.) There's not a lot of positive things happening to go on from a fan stand point.
3.) Whatever hobby or thing he wants to focus on, he still has a few thousand bastard children in his Internet slum to worry about.
4.) Winter can be depressing.
5.) The band doesn't even really like you.

And then it turns into..."damnit, shut it down..   or sell. or whatever. maybe"