I can't say whether or not Valve asked him to, but the man responsible for Torn (Crinity?) went nutso whooping up the hoopla prior to release. Every other weekend he was sending screenshots to PHL and CSNation, and the map is still one of the benchmarks of graphics in HL1. Why wasn't it popular? A few reasons I picked up:

* Overboard visuals: most people I knew couldn't play the map well when it came out. They could care less about graphics and even layout, so long as they get a decent framerate. Considering there were 512x512 textures for hanging plants and way to many ambient_generics, it was just a bit too much for some machines. The entity count was also ridiculously high, because it wasn't enough to the mapper to overturn a van in the street, it also had to be on fire in five different places with breakable glass windows. Still, the detail was fantastic and made incredible use of building ambience with inaccessible areas.

* Too many parallel paths: Classical mapping wisdom says that if two routes empty at the same spot, delete one. This has a drawback: do it too much and you'll get maps like militia that allow you to simply hold a crosshair on one spot and wait. Nonetheless, Torn had way too many routes. This led to new and casual players getting lost a lot, and also to an irritatingly campable section at the T spawn.

* Poor Bomb Site placement: Neither bomb spot is at the CT spawn. In fact, if CT's rush out, they probably won't even pass either bomb site before combat. Both spots were in side rooms, and not even marked with the generally accepted bomb target decal. Further compounding this problem was the irritatingly long route between the sites. Good design calls for a defensive CT to be able to check out both sites within the bomb timelimit, although it's not a bad idea to force him into some exposed areas to do so (cbble). Add in the afforementioned maze factor, and you got some issues.

Nonetheless, I still greatly enjoyed the map as it rewarded smart, stealthy play. There was a large amount of props to use as cover, and a large amount of height variation. I hate flat maps like storm that require little to no use of the z-axis.