Nope, not offended. Opps, your having fun being masochistic = no difference than my having fun.
Don't know what your point is there. That sounds like what I'm saying. One guy's fun isn't necessarily another's fun.
Although you might not have considered it, I merely used it as a example of game play back then. And each person who flew back then, as now, has their own reasons for flying the way they do along with why they like the game. If you think they like the game because you like the game you might be sadly mistaken.
What?
I also am not HiTech so I cannot state subscriptions dropped off and game quality fell due to rising numbers which is why I ask, not to seem argumentative. Did it really? Who left? Any reasons given? Did you happen to be around during the demise of DOS AW? Do you know why it went dead? It raises another question...had AW not closed due to EA buying and shutting it down would it still be up and running with the player base it had? There were many people flying there and there was no sign of it losing customers. However, it's demise gained many custmers for AH. Ergo;
DOS AW died
WB's was up
AOL PC beta was up and in force
AOL Mac beta got running and was up (If I remember right these were an 18 month contract)
Both went live although Mac was up live and running a little later
Concurrently the PC AW version for the internet began
AH began beta
EA bought out AW. In a short time they closed it.
Huge migration to AH began. In fact, we had 72 people who came over en masse. I already mentioned it. Many had not been flying as RL also had them doing other things. They came anyway. Some of those have since gone inactive. Internal issues within our squad also caused loss, not the game.
Does that mean there is an ebb and flow of players? Where is WB now? I know we've recently picked up some WB guys and welcome!
Is there a finite number of players at any given time? If we lose 2 but pick up 3 then lose 1 is that ebb and flow or loss players because of gameplay?
You're getting too far ahead. I see it as an engineering problem, not a scientific one. The theory doesn't matter and isn't my concern. The only thing that matters is if something works, or if you can get it to do what you want it to. The innards of the black box don't matter, only that it spits out what you want it to if you kick it in the right place. Unrestricted single arenas killed gameplay and subscriptions. This isn't about my sense of fun, or yours or anyone in particular, it's about the plain numbers. AH's numbers, not AW a dozen+ years ago, not WB's, or any other formula. You can't compare apples and oranges, not when there's other apples to compare with first. That is, AH before and after the various arena formulas used.
I know HiTech doesn't consider any players morons. He also knows I'm so tough skinned he can call me anything he wants and it rolls off, like you...a duck 
That's good.
I don't "loathe" anything about the game. Each fight brings it's own reward. Even HO dweebs and hordes. It's all part of the game.
It's not that many things for me. They just stick out like sore thumbs because of how good most of the rest is. Puffy ack. That HTC can't employ more people to crank out more planes; I know it doesn't fit with their plan and I know it's not their fault.. I still don't like it. I loathe the fact that (again not blaming HTC for this one either) so many players totally disregard the mind numbingly simple basics of ACM, timing, etc. Using the CT AI and mission "warping" cued by clicks on a clipboard list of "lessons" so that players can rewind and repeat a particular thing in the blink of an eye is something the game needs yesterday, IMHO.
That's the kind of stuff I loathe.. The hordes and dweebiness is chump change next to my real pet peeves.
I'm still trying to understand how gameplay suffered from too many players. HiTech said its we can handle 1000 without software changes. Hmmmm. software changes....growth? Limit growth? He did mention 200/country channel issues, didn't he? But not a software issue? I brought up ebb and flow of player base. Is there really a limit to the number of people that will come and play?
You're conflating two separate things. Player behavior and hardware/software limits. Player behavior is the problem, not HW/SW.
Is equipment a limit. If you look at WOW what does a player have to bring to the table to play? A $300 joystick setup? His computer is it? This game requires a committment to play a combat flight sim. Yet we have tank wars. And lots of folks play it. Do you have to have an expensive joystick setup to fight a tank battle? or run a bombing mission? Remember the contest to name the "new" game of total air battle. You get to start as a 2nd Looey? How many people did someone say it could handle? 1000? Yet I thought we'd still have other arenas. I wonder that we already have a ground war and bomber war along with our normal dogfighting, what marketing is happening to draw a tank war crowd? Yes, this is a flight combat game. But you could attract more since we already have it. No?
Have we reached the limit without software updates? If so then we have nothing more to say because that is HTC's decision to move forward or stay where they are as that is purely financial.
I kind of see your point but don't see what you're getting at.
Personally I don't want to ever see anyone leave this game because of perceived notions of bad game play or not being able to undestand why the need for any arena caps.
And apparently this is exactly what happened back with the single uncapped arena. How many times does history need to repeat? Everytime someone who wasn't there to see it with his own eyes to believe the lessons those who were there say they learned?
