Originally posted by 4510
That's what I saw... what did you see?
I saw you in a 6 on 1 flying for the Rooks, which were the high-numbers country at that time. Also, at the times I saw you and MrDick in the EWA, the LW arenas were not full, with LW1 at 230, and LW2 at 35 or 40.
Given that, I'm not sure that your comments on gameplay being unchanged are relevant or not. Sure, you're still doing that kind of thing, and so are others, but I didn't see the same level of hangar dropping and horde missions that I was never able to avoid in the old MA. I've had a lot more fun in a few hours in the new setup than I had in months in game, and so I consider that to be an improvement.
5tuart- the game is the only product HT offers. It is the only thing that attracts customers. The customers may make him money, but that doesn't mean that they will stay on for years, no matter how hard he works at pleasing only them. However, by focusing on making the game a better product, he will always have new customers, even if he loses a few along the way.
As an example, when AH2 went live, and people realized they'd need to upgrade computers and have better hardware than before, numbers dropped dramatically. There was a great deal of panic then, as people prophecied the immediate death of HTC.
A few years later, here we are still playing the game, with more players than ever before, and more on the way. HT could have worked very hard to maintain that old core of AH1 customers, and he would probably still have been unable to keep them all interested, and would never have had the opportunity for the kind of growth that I've witnessed in that time.
That compromise you mention, IMO, is making the game (the product that brought those customers in the first place) better and better.
