Though Gears of War 3 has only been out for a few weeks, Epic Games is already making changes to the multiplayer. Released in a recent batch of stats by the Epic Blog, the singular change–thus far, anyway–is huge (at least, if you're a Gearhead).
The Sawed Off has been nerfed, and will now have the gib range of a Gnasher. Rejoice!
Aside from this there is a bevy of information available via infographics on the Epic Blog, which include weapon preferences, gametype preferences, most used weapons, and more. Unsurprisingly, Team Deathmatch is the most popular gametype, Gnasher is the shotgun of choice and, lancer is the assault rifle of choice. What may surprise people, however, is that most deaths are due to lancers–eclipsing shotgun kills by twice as many kills. This completely disproves the common sentiment that Gears remains a shotgun-only circus.
Epic is using all of this information to tweak the game accordingly, and the Sawed Off change is but one of the tweaks the game will see in the near future.