You forget there was still a better than 20 year wait before the prequels. And the standard 2ish years between them. As ultimately awful as they were in the end. The fervor about those releases (for the first two at least) was much, much, much higher than it is right now.
So however soul destroying the end result. Pretty much all of us who were around for that shit show experienced excruciating waits (and excruciating films) at a hype level never seen before.
