Why did one hour work back when we had two LWMA? What dynamic was different enough for Hitech to not apply his previous lens of experience from a single arena perspective to the split arenas?
One repeated observation was each arena had a dominate country hoard during prime time. So switching at 60min would keep the "switch at will" group busy acting as hoard predators. Any calculated dweebery because you could switch at 60min was swallowed up in the over all state of dweebery generated by the hoard mentality. The hoards during the split arenas tended to be the dominating play style aspect of each arena. You might say the split arenas became country defined each night based on numbers, country loyalty, and players who would switch to be with the winning side. In that environment side switching altruism to the low number sides was easy, because we had a real problem with player hoards during prime time. Back then we hated hoards so much a new AH term entered the lexicon "vTards".
By the late night taper off, one arena ended up with a furball, and the other with individual milk runs. I guess that was some of the reason to generate a single arena for late night just before we were moved back to a single full time LWMA. An interesting consideration. During the off peak time, there was never any whining in this forum about side switching dweebery due to the 60min limit. Some grumbling from the furball about player IDxyz or players A,B,C jumping countries to be with friends on the other side of the furball. Which wasn't always a side balancing move. With the 60min rule, sometimes that made the furball taper off rapidly due to turning it into a sudden kester whacking for one side at the hands of a group of "friends" who just wanted to fly together. For a furball, 60min is a life time to get a kester whacking at every upping. Not everyone in the world pays to play games just to get a kester whacking. They can spend 8 hours every day with their boss. But, I guess 60min later the "friends" went oopsies, some of us better jump back, our furball is leaving the building.....
The last act is a truer definition of altruism. The jumping to be with friends to slaughter an out-group is normal human behavior. Switching sides to the low numbers for the target rich environment is simple self interest. Altruism presupposes giving up something to another for a future gain. For most of us, only to a member of our in-group. Like friends in the face of a dwindling furball switching back to keep up numbers for their friends and themselves to continue enjoying the group fun. The 12 hour rule begins to make some sense if Hitech is thinking in terms of the whole player population's fun versus the wants of small groups and individuals.
Move forward to our current situation of a single LWMA. Do most of the players advocating for quicker switching play during the off peak hours when 90 players disappear into 20x20 sectors? Or do they want quicker switching all the time? The arena no longer experiences hoards like we did when that kind of game play helped promote a second LWMA arena and the word "vTard". If it is the first scenario, advocating for a new progressive time scale mechanism to enhance the larger player population's fun during off hours has merit.
