The wrestling of the Attitude Era was over-rated without a doubt. Lots of short matches, on both PPVs and TV shows with little in the way of actually wrestling. It was highly entertaining though with consistently good promos and build-up to matches that have not been matched in any following era. I will say that some (or many?) of these segments that I found entertaining at the time have not aged particularly well. Could be because I am getting older, changing tastes or those things were topical at the time.
Attitude era started in 1997 and ended in 2002 according to WWE, but Ruthless Aggression era (2002-2008) was just an extension of it imo. Also, we saw signs of the upcoming Attitude era starting in mid-1996 with the emergence of a new-look Austin culminating with his win and speech at King of the Ring. If the King of the Ring didn't plant the seeds for the Attitude Era, then surely Austin's breaking and entering into Brian Pillman's home - which was the main storyline of a particular episode of RAW in 1996 - certainly did.
I only saw part of this episode some time after, but I believe Austin promised Pillman that he was going to "get him" even if it meant coming to his home and breaking in. I think this all culminated with Austin keeping his word and breaking into Brian's home, only for Pillman to brandish a gun and fire a shot (not seen on tv, only heard) while his wife screamed in the background. Thankfully no one was injured
.
If I recall correctly, the WWE got in a little bit of trouble for this incident from the censors. I think their defense may have been that even though the gun was actually seen on TV, it was not actually fired (or at least fired while a tv camera was trained on the gun. Anyways, this particular episode ushered in more of a reality tv-type atmosphere that followed for the forseeable future on RAW and later Smackdown, and Nitro.