Nah not really, I thought it was alright (not a shade on the original though), but as soon as UT2004 was released they completely stopped selling the game, stopped providng support, offered people UT2004 on the cheap if they owned 2003, and a myriad of other strange things, including press statements where the developers said that UT2004 is the game 2003 should have been. :-P
Taking 2003/4 as the one entity, my main gripe with it in comparison to the original is the way that multiplayer descends into peekfests with a bunch of guys just using brightskins to see you, along with the scale of the maps (which make the players seem pint-sized) trying to compensate for the pace of the game.
I also missed the gothic thing going on - in fact I'm still very bitter that Quake descended into an atmosphereless technohell, and UT doing the same doesn't help!
Absolutely.
I was more of a Morpheus dweller myself though (shame that it was too unbalanced to be played competitively - damn invisibility camping snipers ); I really loved that map played with friends.
Considering the esteem that the developers hold UT2003 in, I think that's quite likely to be the case...
Attention appreciated.
I dunno, I just gradually got less interested with JA, I blame the admin-mods myself, and slipped away from the forums at the same time. To be honest, I've disappeared several times now, I don't think I'm ever going to really leave.
Viva la Spoon.