You can count me in with Naphta and some other's accounts of what happened.
As far as "djs killed it" - wel.. kinda in the "dumbing down of djing" vein - Djs have a lot more power to kill or lively up a dancefloor than they think.. It's just that power doesn't reside in the specific technical skills like beatmatching, it's more in the skills that work on the elements of music and the way audiences respond to those elements. The fetishization of particular skills - and focusing on playing for other djs, rather than a dancing crowd, I think has sucked a lot of the physicality out of the music.
I've heard a good dj play a set of techstep that I enjoyed the hell out of - but it usually required them not being dictated to by the structure of the tracks - i.e. not playing every breakdown, not letting every record have its individual peak and trough.. and layering, cutting, and generally being active with the sound. Of course, combining it with other sounds and styles also increases my interest. Not being bound by genre or any of those external tags - instread of creating a sound-vocabulary, and teaching it to the crowd.
But I remember going to Movement at Mass when a bunch of big-name djs were playing in 2000. It was a bit depressing because, all being big djs, they all had access to the same "exclusive" dubplates, and as a result they played basically the same tunes. But still, when Zinc came on, even playing basically the same tunes as the last dj (and certainly the same production-style tunes, and all in the same narrow genre) it was much more fun to dance to.
I got into djing because I loved dancing, getting inside the music, physically. That brain-body twist. And breaking apart the music (rupture chose his name so rightly) is the best way for me to do that, because it's that break that pulls most audiences in. seamless=death. (I kid! I kid!)
I don't get a ton of love from the mainstream dnb crowd, because i don't focus on the things they've focused on, technically. But I get love from people who love music for music, and love music for what it does to them, who hear something I'm trying to communicate, and from people who love to dance. those are the reasons I care about the most..