Would be nice if this was in RP Discussion instead heh.

At least from my experience (largely in casual and largely in groups), the Guild is ridiculously active for a site that has such a small userbase. RPNation has a whole ass 300+ users online at one time and doesn't feel nearly so active as the Guild, while Iwaku feels like goddamn molasses, tragically. Activity in general has been segmenting though. You have Discord RPs pulling people's attention away (though those are sorta a clusterfuck to navigate), you have dedicated forum sites for single RPs (though Terrasphere's the only one that I thought was cool), but more importantly, you have tabletop RPGs that have exploded into popularity and pulled away people who aren't as into (or just don't have time for) writing posts with little return (think how long it takes for one 'action' to be responded to in written format), when they can run through a whole adventure in three or four hours of a DnD session. Roll20 and Discord both make TTRPG much easier to get into, leaving a smaller portion of people willing to put up with the more gradual, methodical work of written RP.

That's a lot of words spent on saying that, due to there being many more options for getting your roleplaying fix these days, you have less people concentrating or being super active in a single area. So it's definitely a medium thing, less of a 'your hobby is totally dying' thing, imo.

Oh yeah, and on Broken's point, people are 100% expecting more and more outta aesthetics and graphics. It's little wonder that all of the Discord RPs I've hopped into and out of featured grossly gorgeous and convoluted character sheets.