During prime time...when the main rolls over, on those few occasions, there are sometimes 15 or 20 people in the wwi arena.
Initially a lot of people came to AH because of that arena, DOA was pretty much gone and most of the other wwi arenas are not very user friendly. A lot of those initial pilots were not historically AH folks. Some just flew their free period and some stayed awhile longer, and a few are still around. Since HT had designed the original DOA arena, which was popular for a number of years...there was hope he would work on this one. When nothing happened to develop the arena, those folks who came over to fly there left.
It's still great fun to fly those planes, and in fact you don't have to die. The learning curve related to wwi planes is as steep as the curve related to wwii planes. Flying with your wing mates, how you enter the fight and etc. etc. etc.. But without more people there and a more developed arena with diverse things to do it will be only what it is. A lot of fun flying different planes once in awhile - when there are some others flying wwi planes.
There is no reason to close the arena since it doesn't detract from the development of the game and most of the time doesn't even draw pilots away from the main.
There is an audience out there for these planes, but there isn't anything very satisfying available for many of them right now...so this old wwi guy remains ground-bound in a tank most of the time...which is also great fun.
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