gtv alive

I can tell you some huge factors to why there are less opponents + options for publics:

PUBLICS

PB issues on publics -> no longer supporting ET
TZAC servers (majority) were removed from the masterlist to avoid the EC-final DDoSing witnessed mostly in 2009
CYBERGAMES died
lots of pubnoobs who know nothing of Crossfire etc have no idea what TZAC is and just assume their favourite's like BiO & stuff have just died like cybergames.
Master server recently suffered being "removed" for like a month or so, it's back now so it's possible things will get better : )

WARS

TZAC banned (or scared away) quite a high sum of the etpro clan/mix community
games like LoL & SC2 came, those addictive shits that come and kill other games like WoW did on release + the amount of players it stole per expansion
TZAC screenshot count -> nerds get embarrassed to have 1k screens on tzac so they decide to play less active in ET (tzac screens was implimented around the end of summer 2011)

there are some other contributing factors like ET being almost 10 years old but the amount of people who download this game per week should guarantee the game doesn't die overall.. it's just that because of those national community sites for the different nations not being around anymore, public players got nowhere to start except for crossfire and well.. imagine yourself starting off without any teammates straight into the CF community :D you'd be searching a clan for 2 years before anyone knew who you are.

I agree, I think there's a weird charm in sitting alone school, doing some work on your own. I like it as well... as long as there's a PC around.