Lol, lets not beat around the bush here, the only active servers on 1.1 with regular players to this day are the Lettards, and a few clan servers like NoS whenever they have scrims. The IOQuake3 engine -while being remarkably good for it's time and still very fun to play on- is outdated and looks ugly as hell by comparison to anything you will ever see released on Steam today.
Honestly, there's no sense in beating a dead horse.
I think that as long as Rota and Co. have a presentable game that is most definitely playable to submit to Steam, there will be no problems with publicity, provided they are lucky enough to get a day or two on the front page.
Once a hundred or two reviews start appearing with 80%+ on Murnatan's Steam page, people will start sharing the game with each other, and the rest will be history.
A few well-made video advertizements here and there would go a long way to getting the word out as well.