I do enjoy generals, I do agree it seemed rush, and the story was poor but the gameplay was great. Sure it didn't fall into the same storyline, it was a more modern game, but it infact worked as a C&C game, may not be the same story, and to me is good enough for the C&C title. I'm a C&C Veteren and C&C 3 didn't seem oh aw godly like some people think. Yea its a good game, and lot of complaints were made about the story until the expansion, when they filled gaps. But I didn't find the game to be addicting, I would rather play WoW, or even generals then C&C 3, just wasn't addicted, played it a lot at first, then just over time I stopped, and sometimes I go off and on. Online wasn't fun at all, mainly because, most people didn't care about having fun, just winning, and would just rush, rush, rush. lost my interest. Though now it won't even let me online no matter what, I have no idea why, tried making 3 accounts and it wont let me.
The AI in Generals was just sucky and predictable, C&C 3 has a very good AI, Brutal is difficult to beat. Generals survies alot on mods but thousands still play online in non-mods.
So yea lot of people do play, half go online. I normally only play it with the shockwave mod(Best balanced, oldest mod for it) with Advanced AI mod. so then when your going against GLA on hard they literaly sends hordes of basically random units, and are persistent so it can get hard.