Even as an RTS fan, I'm starting to think the genre is dead. AOE 3 actually had some nice updates to the genre, they abandoned most of it though. Sc2 improved on the DoW2 campaign, but it's been nothing since.

Part of the problem is the focus on competitive formats. Pretty much everyone admits it's the least popular format, but it also gets the most attention. Campaign, comp stomps, and co-op are by far the most popular formats, but they get little or no support. Part of it is the pressure to release so early, and competitive is just easier to focus on while fleshing out mechanics and factions. Another problem is listening to pro players of other games, they don't know shit about making a good game, they know what they like about an existing game and want that as much as possible.

Another big problem is focusing on players of well established games. The people still playing ladder on SC2 or AOE2 aren't moving anywhere, there's probably 20x players that have stopped with those games that would love something new. Instead all that gets released are shallow copies trying to get players to move off a game they've played for a decade.