nice everyone is still interested.
i still play of course. almost everyday actually. i played the original MH online until they shut the servers down and i'm sure i'll do the same here.
they change the event quests and arena quests about every week, or week and a half. you can get special items to make weapons and armor that you couldn't make otherwise. although they aren't always better than what you can already forge through regular questing, some of them look pretty cool and are good anyways. you dont actually download anything or any quests.
and also, recently i asked a representative of Capcom if they could increase the maximum amount of people in each city, to which they said it's impossible to do so at this point. the Japanese version allows more people in each city instead of 4. but then again, they also have to pay for the service as well. in the original MH, up to 8 people could enter a city, instead of just 4 like in Tri. i miss those days..
in japan it's a lot different and much more popular. they have Monster Hunter Frontier on the Xbox360 which is more like MMORPG from what i've read, but it's still your tried and true Monster Hunter gameplay... with updates! i really wish Capcom would get on the ball and release something like that over here. i have a feeling in the future they will because the MH brand is simply too gigantic over in japan and it's bound to spill over here someday.
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd is basically like Monster Hunter Tri portable, with more new monsters and older weapons brought back. they took out the underwater feature of Tri though.