I recently attended an LB with the LG after years of inactivity and it's definitely a whole new world. When I last attended the LG, Russian and Waste still had a pretty commanding aura, but this time around it was like the teamspeak was always chatty and I couldn't even hear the orders a lot. This is a far cry from the priority speaker times of older regiments and no chatting until the round was over.
I personally just attribute it to the fact that we were all a lot younger with way more time to devote to games. You had leaders who were really interesting and intriguing and friendships that kept you on teamspeak all day. I remember hanging with Karth, Tico, Mack, etc. Each one had a really cool style of leading that each suited their players strengths and weaknesses.
As pointed out earlier, I think updates would have helped, or better yet, changing the meta to keep the competitive scene changing. Look at CSGO for an example on how simple meta changes have brought fundamental changes to the game that kept people interested.
