That's pretty much how I see it. Jeff may disagree but in truth, the player numbers are pitifully low and ultimately the games popularity is measured by the player/server population and the community backing it.
Strangely, the game was reasonably well received and if you look at Metacritic you see UT3 reviews as PC-83% - PS3-86% & XBOX360 - 82% - Really decent scores by any developers standards but across the 3 platforms sales aren't so good.
The only thing that's kept the game going up to this point is the community map packs and custom content that's being knocked out and this includes the MSUC which tries ever so hard to reinvigorate everyones interest in the product - If it wasn't for fresh stuff like this coming out from a loyal fan base then UT3 would have just faded out, as it is it's just hanging on by it's fingernails and that's really sad to see especially with such a pedigree back catalogue it was riding off the back of.
The expansion pack should breath some life back into the game and I hope it does spark off more interest and it's free ( as far as I'm aware) which is nothing but good news but it needs to be real soon otherwise people just won't care anymore.
Lruce
I don't think it was well recived, it got good to ok review scores, yes, but honestly, i don't trust review scores anymore, just look at GTA4 on the PC, user reviews are practically castrating it, forums and game blogs all over the net are alite with people complaining about that game, yet it has a near endless parade of near perfect review scores from the big gaming sites.. i think good reviews are for sale thease days, Midway just didn't do enough online advertising on thease sites to secure a 90+ score
Beeing active on several other (not Unreal related) gaming boards in the days of UT3's Demo and release, what i saw was very far from a good reception, people either didn't care, or they where complaining about everything from "the graphics sux" to "more of the same, yawn" "this is a Console game" and "the game is just the demo with more maps, screw this", plus many more.
And things where hardly any better here, as soon as people found out the game was just like the demo, even this place was hardly what you'd call "UT3 freindly"
This game has never had an online presense, even in the beginng player counts where abysmal, i remember how people here where trying to come up with excuses as to why it was so dead, how it must be because the students had their finals and things would pick up after that! how people where probably getting it for X-Mas and things would pick up after the 25'th! that people probably got the Orange box instead, but people would soon turn their attention to UT3 and all would be well! for allmost 6 months people where trying to come up with reasons why the players wheren't there, and clinging on to the hope that things would change, all whilst dancing around the obvious elephant in the room, that people wheren't playing because people didn't care or didn't like it.
Honestly though, i think the game got exactly what it deserved, it was neither ready or done, even a whole year later it still feels like a beta as no significant effort has been put into saving it (3 patches that merely fixed bugs and a 3 map mappack that wasen't even done was never going to save this game), and ok, it has competent gameplay, but Epic has been making UT games for 10 years now, so you just can't expect people to get excited over them getting the balance of the same 10 weapons right, it doesen't work that way, that was the bare minimum of what we expected of the game.
The only new thing it gave us was the War-themed SP campaign (and Gamespy, i guess, woot..), and nobody likes it, at most you will find a few who don't outright hate it (most people do look at it with disgust or disbelief though), but nobody thinks it adds anything valuable to the game, and they spend hell knows how much of their alloted dev-time making the thing, and the rest of the game is all the poorer for it.. in every other way it just removes things, it removed gametypes, alot of mod support, it totally nerfed Instant Action, it gave us a worse server browser, a worse UI, a total lack of graphical settings, the netcode is wonky as hell, it still has crashbugs with certain hardware, it removes control over many gameplay options, there is barely any customization to be done (not even the crosshairs), and to top it all off, even the graphics where a letdown and people wonder what happened to thouse crisp textures and high detail models we saw in promotions of the game.
What the hell happened to Epic's mantra of "Bigger and better!", or did that only apply to the GoW series?
The way i see it, you've got two options when making a game if you want to succeed:
1) Make something new, something fresh that will grab our attention.
2) Tread old ground, but make it worth our while, make it bigger and better, polish it to a mirror shine, make it quallity! or find ways to innovate the gameplay.
UT3 does neither, its not new, and its certainly neither bigger or polished in any way, nor is it innovative, its just UT, only this time it comes with lots of issues, hangups, and problems, and only half the optional extras, its like buying the super lightened sports version of a car that has no luxuries, only to find it drives slower than the standard model.
Ok, i'm clearly just ranting/venting here, i admit it, guildty as charged, but i'm in a rotten mood tonight.. (my newyear's eve just got flushed due to illness, grumble grumble).