You make a good point that many problems have been reported for the MA3's, and that it makes more sense to make this decision based on a large sample size rather than a few personal anecdotes. That said, I'm going to chime in with my pro-MA3 experience (to be taken for what it's worth):

I've got 32h MA3's on my commuter and 32h Open Pro's on my cyclocross bike which sees mostly road riding. Both rims have held up well, but to me the MA3's have been a better value: I think they were $20 cheaper per rim. I've only been using them for a year so I may change my tune if cracks start to show up. However, I ride them daily and often with a heavy load (I weigh 175 and carry lots of books and sometimes groceries) and have yet to see any damage at all. I debated between the Open Pro's and MA3's quite a bit before choosing the MA3's, and so far have no regrets.

My experience has been that the quality of the wheel build is more important than the parts used (assuming reasonable quality). An imporperly tensioned wheel will break spokes and crack rim eyelets even on the best rims, yet a well-built wheel with middle of the road components will last a very long time. For example, if buying complete wheels and similar prices, I would definitely buy hand built wheels with lesser components from a good wheel builder than better component wheels from a large distributor.