I honestly believe that the main problem is just the game itself. It's a great game and is really competitive but the problem is that it is marketed at noobs.
The vast majority of people that bought this game did so because they wanted huge battles that lasted for hours and used "real strategy" as opposed to the supposed "tactics" that all other RTS use. It was just a big gimmick and most competitive players from other games couldn't see through it to see the real fast-paced action that lies underneath.
After that you have to add in the technical aspect. 90% of the community want big huge battles. The problem there is that these big, huge battles require big, powerful machines, not only that but trying to organize and see through a big, huge battle online is very difficult. All it takes is one person with a crappy system to ruin an online game and if someone else drops out then you have to start your big, huge battle all over again. People drop out in other RTS games but it's not that big ' a deal because the game was short anyway. So now 90% of the community is having trouble playing online, so many of them won't even come online at all.
The sad thing is that if you play this game competitively in 1v1s then it just plays like any other RTS and you don't have any of the technical problems. You don't require an especially powerful computer (I play on a single core just fine in 1v1) and if someone disconnects then it's not a big deal because the average game is under 30 mins. anyway.
So I think the inactivity comes from the fact that this game was made for noobs and noobs have trouble playing online. Noobs generally don't stick with a game for very long anyway like competitive gamers. If people would just learn to play this game competitively I think we would have a much more active community. The whole ranked player hate just adds insult to injury.
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