I know I'm in the minority here in using miles for free tickets rather than upgrades. The best free-ticket experiences used to be in hard-to-get-to places that often were monopoly routes for a particular airline but could sometimes be bought much more reasonably with miles either on that airline or via alliances. There were also some exceedingly good awards like PER-AKL (stopover)-PPT (destination)-AKL-PER at 25K on *A.

Airlines seem to be consciously and deliberately trying to get rid of those lately, so I'm glad I got to go around Micronesia and the south Pacific when I did. Was also nice to redeem 21-year-old SkyPass miles to get to Mongolia, though the ULCCs might invade there before long. I kept trying for the Seychelles but it took the Etihad mistake-fare sale to crack that (and the ME3 invasion in general), and Madagascar is still out there.

AFAIK the biggest missing link I see is the big sale fare on an alliance partner where a good RDM return tips the decision. One of the last hurrahs there for me was a KL sale a few years ago for IAD-CPT-IAD at $650 or so. I was a DL PM at the time and got a good return on RDMs with the bonuses, and on the AMS-CPT even lucked into an operational upgrade. Those days aren't likely to return.

OTOH, I still get to travel and the total spend on airfare is lower (will be going to SLC in a week on a phenomenal $28.30 ATL-SLC-ATL from F9). Less spend, fewer bennies, but the free firewater would have been hazardous to health at this point, anyway.