Highly anticipated by whom? My understanding was that most people thought it was a stupid cash-grab into the live-service genre. Or has my understanding been wrong?
Gaming
That's why they decided to kill it, but people who were interested in it had some reason for hope.
On the PS3 it was basically a team death match with the mechanics of the game. That's all it needed to be and it was fun.
Now people get angry if the game doesn't have support with content updates for at least 3 years and if it's not monetized then there's no point for the publisher to do it (and the inclusion of it angers the players). It's rough.
However in the case of the PC version, I think it's for the best. If Sony wanted it to be profitable beyond the games price point, that means mtx. If there is development happening on mtx then it's budget not going into the development of the game, which considering the state of the game that did get released... Well...
Now people get angry if the game doesn't have support with content updates for at least 3 years
I mean, have you seen the state game studios are releasing games in now? It's like 3+ years of updates just to get it to the place it was supposed to be at release.
The live service space is so crowded now that it would be difficult for even Naughty Dog to break into it successfully. Not to mention the fatigue around live service games lately. They made the right call by not trend chasing.