A FlyerTalk forum for a given airline probably tends to attract most heavily the travelers who are interested in maximizing their returns from the existing parameters of airline's frequent flier program. RR 1.0 (or RR 1.5, for those who prefer to consider the devaluation when Freedom awards were introduced to merit renaming the program RR 1.5) has been around long enough that it does not surprise me that a lot of folks who were successful in taking advantage of the ins-and-outs of the RR 1.0 structure became heavy posters here. No surprise, then, that many of the posters here are complaining that RR 2.0 isn't nearly as good for them as RR 1.0 or 1.5 was. Just your standard selection bias....
For those for whom RR 2.0 is better, (a) many of those who may already be here as active posters or as lurkers don't see much point in being very verbal about it; (b) many of them are out there but haven't found there way to this FlyerTalk forum yet.
The question is what do Southwest's overall booking patterns look like, and it's too early to tell. And, those who have the actual numbers (as well as the projections that had been presented to Southwest management) aren't speculating or posting here about it.
As time passes, I expect changes to the average profile of the active participants in this forum.
RR 1.x offered
1 award trip (potentially long-distance and therefore probably more expensive, and sometimes bookable at the last minute when a revenue ticket would have been quite expensive)
for every 8 paid trips (potentially short-distance and therefore probably cheaper, and purchased at the cheapest available sale fare).
RR 2.0 offers
1 award trip for every 10 paid trips IF the price of the award and paid trips are the same and the fare type is the same.
If the frequent traveler has to buy AnyTime fares for business due to short notice but can plan ahead to buy WGA fares, even if the WGA fare is only a tiny bit cheaper in dollars than the AnyTime fare (e.g., often true right before the WGA fares disappear entirely due to advance purchase requirements), then the reward ratio becomes
1 award trip for every 6 paid trips.
If the frequent traveler is A-List (A-), that ratio improves to
1 award trip for approx. every 4.5 paid trips.
If the frequent traveler is A-List Preferred (A+), that ratio improves to
1 award trip for every 3 paid trips.
All of the above ratios must be adjusted, and it's possible the adjustment is dramatically for the better, if the traveler happens to be traveling a relatively expensive business route but wants to redeem on a relatively inexpensive leisure route, for example.
Over time, those for whom the above is extremely attractive should be attracted to participate in this forum. However, since RR 2.0 isn't as game-able as RR 1.0 was, perhaps there will be somewhat less activity here than there had been under RR 1.0. But that doesn't translate to RR 2.0 not being successful for Southwest, which after all should be motivated by making profits consistently than by increasing the volume of discussion in a discussion bulletin board.
P.S. I appreciate the lack of melodrama in the original poster's posts and in GottaLuvCruising's posts. No, RR 2.0 isn't as good for them as RR 1.x was; they're going to rationally examine their options and choose future travel accordingly. That's always the right answer....