The katana was not more powerful in 0.3, not in any way.
The katana might be useful to a good player when he/she does not have any other weapons or other rather wierd situations, with hooking and stuff you can do pretty well with it also. However it's overall impact is clear, in top games it's not useful enough to be in focus of the games. (Unlike other powerups that seems to occupy the same spot in other games, such as the quad in the quake games.)
However the main reason why I personally gave up on bothering about the katana, and thought it was pretty ok after all, is the following:
In Quake 3, the developers added the BFG with the idea "this will allow even noobs to get some frags!". This failed horribly, as the bfg had a big flaw, it was too strong in the hands of good players, and because of it, the good players made sure they got it as much as possible. This is sort of where the katana succeeds, it's great in the hands of noobs, as it will surely give them points (at least against other noobs). However it's not strong enough in the hands of good players (compared to just using regular weapons), and because of that, they won't take it all the time.
So while the good players may think that the katana does not fill its purpose as it is now, it seems that the weak players love it 
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aka kiwi
