If you're new to the UT series, you should know a little bit about the history of the series.
The original UT, sometimes called UT99 or UT-GOTY (game of the year edition) was a smash hit and by far the most successful game of the series. Players made thousands of custom maps and mods for it, clans and leagues were formed, thousands of people could be found playing the game 24/7, and people still play it greedily and competitively to this day.
Then Epic released UT 2003, which, if I understood Hal from the Beyond Unreal community correctly, was essentially a console port. Floaty-dodgey movement was added and most people hated the game after large amounts of hype had been built for it. Some people who'd purchased it even felt that they'd been robbed. The UT99 clan community despised it.
Epic then fixed many of the bugs and some of the game play from UT 2003, and added some new game types, especially Onslaught, and then released it as UT 2004. Although it still had floaty-dodgey movement and thus an emphasis on hitscan weapons and fast aim, the game did well and was carried by the Onslaught game type, which introduced vehicles and was a great game in itself.
With UT3 Epic did a decent job with the feel of the game play. The game play feels more like the tried-and-true UT99. The game play was good and many UT99 players who'd rejected UT 2003/2004 style liked the game play of the demo. But...and here's where Epic ****ed the duck...everything else about the game was god-awful. Everything surrounding the game play was rotten! Epic consolized the user interface and server browser and then hopped into bed with Gamespy. The user interface is clunky and slow and requires people to have to wait to load the main menu constantly and it offers few settings tweaking options and you cannot keybind taunts and communications comments. ("Cover me!") The server browser, at the game's release, barely functioned and was featureless. In fact, it wasn't even possible to make a list of server favorites. People are also required to log into Gamespy which can sometimes cause a number of problems. The retail version of the game was also released as an unfinished, buggy beta and it was released when other more polished, big name titles were being released. Hence, the game sold poorly and now has low player counts and few custom, user-made maps and mods.
The UT 2004 user interface and server browser were pretty good and the UT99 UWindows user interface was good also. People were expecting that for UT3, but when they saw just how crappy it was in UT3, they lost enthusiasm for the game. UT3 also has fewer game types than the other games, few player skins, and awful, awful taunts.
It's very sad when a sequel pales in comparison to what previous versions offered, but with UT3, that's what happened. Hence, UT3 has proven to be an Epic Failure.
Can the Unreal Tournament franchise be saved? Yes, and Epic could do it and might even be able to figure out what to do. However, the problem is a lack of desire on Epic's part, not ability. Having been infected with an awful case of consolitus, it seems doubtful that Epic will ever make another game for the PC that will rival the greatness of the original Unreal Tournament.
In the meantime many of us will continue to play the original UT in clanner-style pickup games (PUG) matches for as long as such activity continues to last, maintaining fond memories of how much fun the game was years ago when thousands of people could be found on the public servers 24/7 and when custom map aficionados eagerly awaited seeing new maps.
Whatever amount of activity and community UT3 has, it's merely a faint shadow of what UT99 had and even of what UT 2004 had. Will the real story about what led Epic to kill the franchise ever come out? Did Midway force Epic to release an unpolished, unfinished buggy beta with a consolized user interface and server browser months before the game was really ready for the PC? Or did Epic really believe that PC players wanted a consolized, clunky and slow user interface with a featureless server browser? Or did Epic make a conscious business decision to kill the UT franchise on the PC? Perhaps, one day, the real story will come out.