Look I can even start up ancient games from ten years back and still find servers and players, and Arena did not get the support it deserves, it's a great little game, but without players on multiplayer it can not last(I checked the highscores and at i recognized a few names from CIC users.
People playing a game does not constitute "support" and people not playing it does not represent a lack of support. XBLA games have a fairly short lifespan. Arena was somewhat popular when it was new, which it very much is not now.
Can we still start games on ranked servers and just wait for someone else to turn up, or do I really need to add all you guys manually?
I get the feeling that you don't really understand how Xbox Live works. Yes, you can start a ranked match and wait for someone else to start Arena and check to see if there are ranked matches available, and then join yours.
There's no such thing as "adding us manually" to your game. You can add us to your friends list and send us invites if you'd like, or you can
post that you'd like to play sometime right here on the CZ and I'm sure several of us would be plenty happy to play a game with you. I still need to unlock the last Rapier so I can get the last two achievements. I am completely open to playing Arena, even with you.
It is not a chore to schedule a game time here at the CZ and then wait for everyone to show up on Live.
Howabout Friday and Saturday night this week we try to get a few hours in? I'll be available and I know couple other people will be. If we can get enough people interested we could have a couple pretty large matches. This is pretty standard procedure as far as getting a game going.