Here's my reply:
This is the player life cycle HT was talking about. Possibly there is some confusion between getting bored with the game itself and mastering the new game differences. If you're not "into the game" how can you really justify skating the learning curve again?
I think because of the game change many leaving players fail to really examine the deeper underlying causes of why they've lost interest and just attribute it to the most obvious thing.
I think if the game hadn't changed, you may have left anyway. For every one of these vets around here who have stuck around since AW or whatever, there's probably a great number of players who have come and gone after a year or two, never to play an online game again.
I do understand the "immediate gratification" idea and agree that AH2 is different from AH1 in that respect, so if "IG" is what you're looking for, AH2 probably isn't going to be as satisfying anymore. No worries, each to his own.