Hopefully players will return once system requirements are met by common, average computers.
Nope, we've been through all this before, "all the students have finals, once thouse are over the servers will be bursting with players!", "the game was advertized really poorly, people probably don't know about it yet, but they will come!", "Tons of people probably got CoD4 or the Orange box for X-mas, but you'll see, soon they will pick up a copy of UT3 and the servers will fill up!", "wow the MSUC is here! now things will get into gear!", "i'll bet once the second patch is out the people will come!", "people must be growing tired of CoD4 and TF2 by now, UT3 can only get more players then!", "the third patch is allmost here! woo! now things will pick up!"..
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, UT3 player counts started out depressing, and they have only gotten worse ever since, the only thing that could potentially have saved it was if Epic had done a bang up job giving it speedy patches and bonus packs shortly after release, but they didn't do that, and it's way too late now, hell, i don't think Epic will release anything huge in the future either, just what they must to keep the MSUC alive, if that.
Fact of the matter is that UT3 has actually not sold that poorly, it was no giant hit or anything, but there's no shortage of copies in circulation, yet only around 500 people actually play this game if GameSpy is to be belived, and there is only one explination for that many people buying the game yet not playing it, they dont want to play it, they are not happy with it.
We still have UT2k4 to monkey around with, why not move all community efforts back there?
That's my wet dream right there, if we could just go back, but i don't think its happening, history just doesen't support it, lots of people didn't like UT2k3, but that didn't mean they went back to modding UT, and the same is true for just about any other franchise you can think of, teams will often finish the version they where working on, but then they move on, or go elsewhere if the new game bombs.
And new mod teams are avoiding it like the plague, even with the MSUC, i have seen many modders on various PC gaming forums and IRC channels drop the idea of using UT3, simply because nobody plays it.
Im not about to tell you what games you should or should not buy or play, i'm just telling it like i see it, i don't think UT3 has any bright future instore for it, a very small but hardcore fanbase will undoubtedly continue to play it for a good while still, like they have been till now, but i don't see that fanbase getting bigger, only smaller, because i just don't see Epic doing what needs to be done to salvage the game, and even if they did, it's probably too late now, more so because Epic has really angered alot of PC gamers as of late with very unfortunate comments in interviews.
I think it would take something huge, nay, a miricle to change things.
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