It did, it's pretty clear that the game got abandoned during development. freaking amazing assets paired with super bad menus and campaign. not even a proper ladder... No observer mode at all... Compare with CoH2 were you can watch other people games in real time.
And for first patch (anihilation mode patch), Kat already said they have to borrow people from other projects, cause the project team was moved even BEFORE game release.
If DOW3 was abandonned during development, do you really think Relic would have tried to integrate a new multiplayer game mode ? with 3x9 unique Elites and billions of doctrines ? a campaign with 3 races playable when they did only 1 race playable in vDOW1 and vDOW2 ? Do you really think they would have abandonned a very profitable license BEFORE the game was even out ?
Sorry, but you're blind if you think this.
DOW3 failed for many reasons, but I highly doubt than AOE4 was the main one. Maybe it's one of them, but the main reason is : players didn't like it and it would have been stupid to spend more money on it.
