I'm surprised new weapons are coming out because it was officially stated that development for Splatoon was ended. I suppose these weapons were created before ceasing production and simply had a countdown timer until now.
I still play Splatoon but it's more in spurts than a constant. When Splatoon came out I was playing nonstop but these days I'll play for 3-5 days of only Splatoon then shelve it for 2-3 weeks. Not too sure why I stop...Splatoon is highly addictive though it can be frustrating.
I don't actually know how many players there are on the Splatoon matchmaking but finding a game has always been fast (under 2 minute). The biggest issue with Splatoon's matchmaking is for some reason Japanese players get in on American games and lag it up. Furthermore the Japanese players tend to outplay with excess skill, too much practice or NEETs which can make for some really rough one-sided games. Whenever Splatfest comes around matchmaking is region locked and lag almost never exists and I tend get a really large winning streak which makes me wonder what rank I could get...but I'm not dedicated enough to really get into ranked; I just play for fun.
I'm open to the idea of private matches. As to if I'll actually have the time to allocate to meeting online at a specific time...idk. I'm in the pacific time zone