It's the game as I've played it in the past, and I've seen plenty of team wipes since we came back. We currently have a thicker population of CoH die-harders than the average back-then days shards did, I think. These are the folks who download builds and so on, who were already pretty knowledgeable about this game. The market's a bit easier to use to pick up what you want too, which is a change I'm going to argue for until my full-mask option turns blue, because it was frustratingly difficult to get into by the end of the game at shut-down.
And hey, we also have a bunch of newbies, like the person who just posted here who needed directions on how to get to Peregrine Island because they didn't even know it existed (this is not a dig at that person whatsoever, we were all newbies at one time or another). I know I've been on several teams in the past since about May when I started playing again that had such new-comers, and you better believe we suffered team wipes; I've also seen plenty of them on teams of experienced players, Malta and Carnies are never going to be easy.
As usual, anecdotal evidence isn't always the best indicator of something. And hey, if nothing else, come team with me and I promise you we'll die repeatedly!