Yep sounds like what they did with ET.
If you look at the Gamespy stats, FEAR is very low on the list with few players. Many older games (that arent even that good IMO) have much more players/servers. I think RTCW was sorta like that. Good game, but wasnt really a hit, so they released free multiplayer and it became a very popular and respected game, even today.
So I'm pretty pumped they are doing that. I had decent fun with the MP demo, but FEAR as a whole just didnt do it for me to buy.
BUT... they have better gotten rid of cheating!! There was a cheater in almost every game in the MP demo. This one.. it was like me and 5-6 teammates vs ONE cheater. The cheating guy moved like 20x faster, jumped way higher, everything. I dunno wth was with that. You would catch a glimpse of him and turn to aim then you'd be dead. He could take out our whole team in a room without getting hit once.