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To be honest, I do have to agree. When Sauron had the Ring he didn't seem to have any extra abilities and his hosts didn't seem any better. In a way, the One Ring was a failure in my eyes; the elves could just take their rings off, the dwarves only focused on themselves (and they might have become stronger,) and the Nazgul didn't need the One Ring to be controlled after they were made. All Sauron had was a band of gold on his finger. The Last Alliance was composed of the survivors of Numenor (few and lacking a good deal of their standard supplies) and and kingdom of elves that was much, much weaker than the kingdoms in the First Age. Without any divine backing or even a prophecy, they marched in, destroyed Mordor, and killed Sauron.
With the destruction of Arnor, the Great Plague, and the elves getting "depressed" and leaving, the reason that Sauron would have won in the Third Age is that only he had the "morale" or want to summon a large army up. Everybody else was either giving up or suffering from previous problems.
After reading the book, the Ring seemed more dangerous in the hands of Sauron's enemies than in Sauron's own. Everybody was at risk of becoming obsessed over it and killing each other for the Ring.
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"And forth went Morgoth, and he was halted by the elves. Then went Sauron, who was stopped by a dog and then aged men. Finally, there came the Witch-King, who destroyed Arnor, but nobody seems to remember that."
-A History of Villains
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