Since then, epic has been a bunch of Gold-Chain wearing posers pumping out crap games.
Lol! That's a funny way of putting it. They wear gold chains and drive fancy sport cars.
Well, I guess GoW wasn't bad. But the unreal series was butchered since the original Unreal Tournament.
UT 2003 sucked. UT 2004 is actually a good game in its own right but it isn't a proper sequel to UT99. UT3 is consolized and Gears-of-Warrified garbage.
BTW, if you're still interested in playing UT99 regular weapons capture-the-flag, send me a pm and I can tell you where you can find a group of people who play clan-match style 5v5 games every night. They organize them on IRC and use a program to help them draft-pick the teams. You just sign up to play and when it fills to 10 people, two become team captains and draft-pick the other players often resulting in balanced teams. Then they get on voice comm and have assigned positions. It feels like a spontaneously organized clan match but without clans or schedules.
As for UT 2004, it's a good game but for different reasons than UT99. UT99 CTF is far superior to that of UT 2004. However, UT 2004 introduced two new games which, if you give them a try, are lots of fun--Onslaught and Invasion (specifically the Invasion Monster Hunt RPG mod).
Onslaught is kind of like playing Domination on a large map with vehicles. The vehicles are fun and can be taken down by players on foot. Your team tries to link up points on a map until they connect to the enemy base so that you can destroy the enemy's main power node (which cannot ever be repaired). The control points have hit points and can be build up and shot down. It's a lot of fun.
In Invasion-RPG the server remembers your name and IP, allowing you to gain experience points from killing monsters over time and to level up. It's non-competitive and more of a cooperative game where you can just get to know people and make friends while sharing weapons and stuff. There are magic weapons and all sorts of enhancements you can add to your character. The game is played in waves from 1 to 16 with progressively harder monsters and can actually get rather challenging. Boss monsters come out at Wave 16 and everyone gains extra XP if they all die.
So give UT 2004 a try, it's fun in its own right. You can get the Unreal Anthology for $7 plus shipping now at GoGamer.com and you might be able to find it for $2 at a local Gamestop.