It was a laggy bug fest. Terrible. 2 was just as bad. 3 was the sweet spot.
The original Gears is the purest form of multiplayer across the four games. It had problems with host advantage but as long as you played with somebody with a good connection and arranged matches with other teams it's still a great experience to this day.
Gears 2 at launch and for some time after was an utter mess of bad ideas, balancing issues and bugs and glitches. After a fair few patches (delayed grenade tag timer, no smoke knockdown ect ect) it was again a very good game online with some utterly brilliant maps.
Gears 3 like you say is the most refined experience and I guess that's why people like it more than the rest. However it switched the focus from the tense and tactical battles of Execution/Warzone and pushed TDM as the main game type. In my opinion the series suffered for it.
As for news of this remaster? Well if the game has actually received a good amount of work like upgraded textures, lighting, performance upgrade and a smooth online experience I'm there day fucking one.