I don't think WarBirds ever had an hourly cost? Did it? I thought it was monthly? I know that Air Warrior did: that was $6/hr and I had to pay an extra $6/hr long distance to reach their POP number.
So Hitech, it's your fault (well not your fault per se but you most certainly DID present a HIGH amount of influence in the matter) that I had to go thru bariatric surgery recently to lose enough weight to stay healthy enough (and to comfortably reach all my controls in my "cockpit"... in my older fast approaching years) so's I can keep on playing this here hobby of mine for a few more years, Lord willing...............
You may be right,it could have been AW! I have copies of both games and it was over 20 years ago so I might have mixed them up. Either way the cost was prohibitive for me at the time,I had to settle for playing in "the Zone" which was an old MS setup. I couldnt even get AOL at the time without paying long distance charges... Besides n one would want to give CC info out to the net back then,it was a scary new thing....
If you think you are having a 1v1 in the Main Arena, your SA has failed you.
Was it 30 years ago that I was running out to the mailbox to get the telephone bill before the wife could see it? There were many $600.00 months while playing early Air Warrior.AW was the first computer game I ever played, on the first computer i ever owned. I hooked it up, turned it on, created an AOL account then did a search for "Flying Game". 17 hours later the download completed and I turned it on to my amazement.
I have not bought a box game of ANY sort since then as I had found the type of game that I've always wanted to play.....a WWII flight combat simulated game playing against other HUMANS using "real simulated" flight controls w/ planes using "real aerodynamics"...."real stick and rudder flying mono vs mono"...........
I wrote that game over 20 years ago now.HiTech