True, RL has a strong part to play in whether people quit or not, but quite often I think you will find people quit because they see no hope in winning. Most people play games to win and if there is ZERO chance of that happening then many will just hang up their gloves so to speak and move on.
If someone is winning a game and still getting a lot of enjoyment, they can often (certainly not always) continue playing even through RL issues. I myself had some RL issues very recently where my 14 month old son got burned quite badly, have spent a number of days at the children's hospital, I have also had marital troubles (mainly due to the time spent on this game), the birth of a child, and soon to be the birth of another in my time here, I have continued on. There have been times I have considered the easy way out by quitting, but I have invested this much of my life, so I will be seeing it through. If people's lives become too busy to focus on this game, but they want to continue, they could find a coplayer and log in as and when they could, but if there is no hope whatsoever why would they bother, many will not and blame it on RL.
Obviously, just my opinion on it and there have been some extreme circumstances where RL really MUST take over from this game. Within TLA alone, people have died, got divorced, failed at school, and had new babies to contend with and all of them have stuck with it (with the exception of the death, obviously), where they could not, they found another player to continue on and/or co-play.
