Thoughts After Finishing a Long Campaign

[LoyalPaladin]

A few months ago my party and I finished a 3.5 adaptation of Dragon Lance, which was absolutely awesome. It took us about 3 years to get through and our DM is absolutely the bomb. But after finishing such a long campaign, I've come to understand that long campaigns can also be the death of a party.
Once again, Dragon Lance was AWESOME and so was our DM. But, the last quarter of the campaign I noticed all the players becoming increasingly unfocused and less involved and I don't believe it is because of the story.
Now let me preface this by saying that our group is VERY roleplay oriented. High damage is fun, but if we don't have a meaningful purpose to fight then we sort of lose steam. Dragon Lance was the perfect catalyst to drive us towards a goal. But I believe the issue we had towards the end is that we had all changed SO MUCH between character creation and year 2.5 that we were disconnecting with our characters.
When we started I had been out of highschool for about 6 months. I was 18 years old and had a really big passion for animals and the outdoors, thus, I played a Silvanesti Ranger. I will always love that character deep down, but her personality and skill set are just not my thing anymore. But now I am 22. I play an Aasimar Paladin and am finding this to be a much more fitting role for how I handle things in general.
Given the chance, I would restart Dragon Lance in a heartbeat. That campaign was so much fun. But as for character creation, that would be tough. I think everyone in my party could say the same thing. Most of them have shifted pretty far from their old class.
What about you? Do you have any stories or thoughts to tack on to this? How would you keep up with changing personalities in a party or evolve a character with yourself? Let me know.

For any curious people, here is our old (left) and new (right) party:
Silvanesti Ranger - Aasimar Paladin
Human Fighter - Human Cleric
Half-Ogre Fighter - Human Cleric
Human Wizard - Human Bard
Kender Rogue - Human Swordsage
Human Monk - Yuan Ti Warlock

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's probably just a touch of burnout. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea to give the game a rest for a while.

If not that, you could at least try doing something radically different. Perhaps a pulp-fiction style eberron game.

Trying to cling to something that's run its course rarely works out well.

[LoyalPaladin]

It's probably just a touch of burnout. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea to give the game a rest for a while.

If not that, you could at least try doing something radically different. Perhaps a pulp-fiction style eberron game.

I think that is what our DM had in mind. He is now running a Baldur's Gate campaign which is pretty radically different in comparison. I also REALLY love Faerun and the Forgotten Realms. I've never played a game set in Eberron, but it is on my bucket list. Everyone at the table is always stoked to sit down at the table though. Since we switched campaigns it's back to the hooting and hollering we were doing in the first 2 years of the DL. It's nice.