I remember the 600+ nights well, that's the reason I'm sticking around and still subbing after all these years, I'm hopeful the new version will be both good enough to attract new players over from WT and elsewhere, as well as bring old/retired/etc players whom have been lurking about back out of the woodwork. I think HTC can get there, altering some game policies and gameplay stuff may not hurt either, but I still think everything standing pat as it is, with a new version without any new gameplay adjustments, stands a decent change of pumping the numbers back to the days of yore.
Somebody mentioned in another thread something about adding small infantry groups. I've made that suggestion years ago myself. Squad sized units controlled with the old FPS "wsad" system, with various armament selections (anti infantry, anti armor, etc). Also it would give the jeep and other infantry vehicles more of a purpose in the game, plus adding towed artillery would be very cool for attacking towns and such. It would add a huge fun dynamic to the game, and IMO, THIS feature could attract a lot of players, especially if it was made free to play. Infantry guys playing for free would see what fun the rest of would be having strafing them, bombing them, and crunching them with tanks, that it would IMO probably add at least 10 percent of these free guys to the paying roster, which I think would be a profitable venture bandwidth cost wise and such. Just an idea, but I think it would be great fun, and give more meaning to the existing ground units, and ground attack units as well. I don't know beans about the coding of the game, but I'll bet that it would pretty easy for HT to implement such a feature, and would again, add a massively fun new dimension to the game, something that could be ftp and would absolutely attract piles of potential new subscribers to the full game.
I know it's against some of the ethos and policy of what I've read from HTC way back about not opening up a premium subscription based game to the masses, but times have changed in the world of net gaming enough IMO to warrant such a venture. Look at the WoT and WT numbers, they are insane. Then look at Eve, a game with nearly 100k subscribers. Then the new Star Citizen venture, with 500k investors at 50 million bucks. I believe a blending of these idea with something along the lines of what I just described could only help propel HTC forward. With larger numbers, a ton of the negative waves from various players over various issues would take care of themselves for the most part IMO.
