Turns out it was just me.
So I finally get back into the arena a few minutes later, and find out that the spit-9 is unavailable due to ENY disablement.
WTF? The spit-9 is some sort of damned wonderplane?
mouse over to quit button, click.
I was all set to spend another 4-5 hours in the arena, several squaddies were on, all was good. I'd managed to land a couple of kills and figured a plane like the spit-9 was safe but certainly not some sort of wonderplane, something I could have fun in. It can't run from p-51s, 190s, or LA-7s, can't turn with a lot of the lighter planes, has small fuel tanks, basically a good plane to go furball in, nothing more. But it must be some sort of crazy wonderplane so it must get disabled when rooks have 10 players more than whoever because some squad just logged in.
Really, this is going to sound to HiTech like a whiny rant but come on. It's gotten stupid. The war wasn't lopsided, nobody was screaming about how unfair things were, in fact it looked like everyone was having fun. Then whack you can't fly your uber spit-9 so have fun my way or get out.
Out.
I was having SOOOO much fun... graphics looked great, framerates were fun, I was ranting about how much I liked this terrain, I got whacked a few times but finally landed a 3 kill sortie, fun fun fun. Even the bad guys were fun. We gained a field, lost a field, fun fun fun. I was even digging the grayish spit9 skin because it looked really cool.
Oh no, you're a spit-9 uber run dweeb furball gangbanger so we're not gonna let you fly your wonderspit. fun -> toilet
Sorry HiTech, I really tried. The game is awesome but the plane disablement experiment really kills it for me. I'm sorry as hell it happened on the first day of my first vacation in a year, the first day I've been able to get online in weeks. The first day I logged out because for the first time in a long time I actually got mad while online.