Size and activity and such. Ever have trouble finding games?
Did you check the dedicated forums for it?
http://forums.shoryuken.com/forumdisplay.php?f=238
http://forums.shoryuken.com/forumdisplay.php?f=239
Minus the bickering and petti-ness… it’s kick-ass (no pun intended).
It is still strong. However, I think with the introduction on MVC2 to XBL, T6, and BB there maybe a bit of an exodus from the player pool.
all the mediocre players will go on to the other games
I have never had any problem to find a game.
I don’t own a PS3, so I can’t speak for the community, but depending on where you live, the net-code may make the game unplayable for you and not worth getting. I live out in the boonies of Canada and I end up having 100+ ping with a lot of players. It’s horrid, as you drop frames left and right, which makes the game suck regardless of community. GGPO or 2DF may be better options, and the population there is pretty constant.
Edit: Oops, OP does have Xbox. You’ll find your reputation will go down into the pooper pretty quickly from beating random people. Over time, you will learn to recognize names and the “regulars” as it were. Since SF4 has come out, the population has dropped significantly, but that also means a lot of the assholes have left. You’ll occasionally run into the odd 12 year old who can’t stop cussing, but you will also find some people that are genuinely friendly and more than willing to give advice (Thelo, EA Megaman, etc).
XBox Live is somewhat crappy. Lots of dickheads, and as Raakam said expect your reputation to take a hit just for winning. My advice is to play with people who post on this board.
That about the reputation is so true. It proves that some people don’t like to lose.lol. Naw, but there is a lot of great people fatboy, EAmegamen, Tyram, and many more.
I hereby present to you the Official Thelo Tip about Xbox Live reputation:
Ignore it entirely.
I don’t eve know what it is 
I just wanted to make sure that when I get this game (very soon) that there will be plenty of games, I don’t want to be sitting on there waiting to get into games for 5 minutes at a time. I’ll definitely be getting my ass kicked by the forum members here for sure =) can’t wait!
Best advice I’ve read on this forum.
i have fairly crappy ping usually but i find it to still be playable. Not to hijack but at what ping would you guys say lag begins to become a serious issue.
Personally, I enjoy watching it go down. It makes me laugh.
200+ anything below that is fully playable.
It really depends on how you set your “network smoothing” setting. I turn it off, and anything near or around 100 is really bad. It noticeably drops frames, which makes playing pretty difficult. Roll backs also become an issue. When you’re trying to time a safe jump, even the littlest bit of lag becomes a nightmare, at least for me.
I think the answer is simply not to take online play too seriously. You can learn a lot, and if you find people with really good ping, you can play seriously and expect good and immediate responsiveness from the game. Do you have anyone to play the game offline with?
to perfectly sure of a smooth game I’d say dont play anything above 120, ideally not above 100, but if you cant find games that low then 150 should be the absolute limit.
I wish it was possible to setup ping filters for player and ranked matches
Well, if turning off network smoothing makes 100-ping games really bad, how about turning it back on? I’ve left network smoothing to the defaults and find that 100-ping games are actually pretty good.
My experience with it on has been of significant input delays as well as increased rollbacks. I don’t want to derail the thread from the original intent of the OP too much, but I’ve just taken to playing on GGPO to avoid most of the issues I find on HDR anyhow. Once I move back to Montreal, I’ll gladly play on XBL regularly again 
Tell me about this “smoothing,” I haven’t heard anything about it.
And is HDR on GGPO? Or are you guys referring to turbo?
dont play with a mic on and your set