A Message to Epic Games

It's been a long time since Epic has released a game that's part of the main, singleplayer-focused Unreal franchise. Most of the series' popularity came from its spin-off series, Unreal Tournament. An attempt at a single-player based sequel to Unreal was purposed in 2000, eventually releaseing in early 2003. Unreal II: The Awakening, developed by Legend Entertainment, was a disappointment to most people who played it. It barely had anything to do with its predecessor or even with the popular Unreal Tournament and its sequel, Unreal Tournament 2003. Personally, looking at it now, it looks to me like a tasteless mix of Halo, Mass Effect and a small, irrelevant piece of Unreal.
Even Unreal Tournament saw litle new announcements since 2007, when Unreal Tournament 3 was released.
Both Unreal 2 and UT3 were the last releases of their respective serials because their popularity was low compared to earlier releases. While people at Epic probably thought that this is due to gamers not being interested in the Unreal universe anymore, that they moved away, because Unreal was "too old for them".

But that isn't true. In fact, Unreal Tournament 99 remains popular to this day. And even its parent game from 1998 has gathered quite a large fanbase that remains strong even now. And I believe that releasing a new title in the franchise, especially a direct sequel to the original 1998 game, would give Epic the chance to correct their past mistakes that caused them to go away from the series, and make the new release highly popular.

And so, our goal is to show Epic Games, as well as Digital Extremes, that the Unreal community isn't dead, but far for it, and that would mean more demand for a new Unreal title, and that they should start working on one. And if they are working on one, speak up and announce it, and satisfy us all.
And maybe get CliffyB involved somehow, preferably at an important position.

OldUnreal.com - A fanpage of Unreal, whose co-founder, Smirfsch, created a patch for Unreal Gold that I recommend.[www.oldunreal.com]
UnrealSP - Another Unreal fansite. They also have a Steam Group.[www.unrealsp.org]