You forgot the root of it, tiny arenas that fit with room to spare inside of one of our sectors.
Have you ever considered that a two sided war game is not much different than Hitech setting up the MA so when a new map first pops up, only 9 feilds can be upped from in the center. And for every enemy field captured, another field in your own country becomes available to you just behind the first three. He makes one of the first three un-capturable, but if the other two are captured. You either mount one desperate push, or watch the two other countries from the tower kill each other to get more feilds opened. And you still have to meet a percentage captured to win the war. Allowing for the condition the third country is stuck on one field and everyone switched sides or logged out to play another game.
Some of our gamers come from games with that kind of desperation level and tiny arenas. And some think they want that kind of desperation level in our giant arena with out tiny numbers. Still, this might even be an interesting unconventional play arena like we have capture the sheep and a queued fight DA, but with say 6 feilds per country to race to the win.
I bet if it was not forced on everyone as the MA, it wouldn't see many trying it out.