I log in when it is convenient for me to play, not when everyone else plays. That is usually about 10 pm EST or later on week nights after my family has gone to bed. I have never seen a night with more than about 150 players and usually is closer to 100 or less. I played when there were two arenas because the first one was at 100% with like 700 and the other was stuck with the leftovers like 300 to 500. People used to complain about getting stuck in the 2nd arena with the sub-500 numbers.
I really don't mind an arena with 100 players if I can find a base where I can get in a few good hops before going to bed. I have a couple of nights where I was flying with the right guys and flying against the right guys. Non-stop action. Good fights. Couldn't wait to re-up for more fun. But that kind of night is at best 1 in 5 maybe 1 in 10. Whereas when a play DCS World single player, I enjoy every single minute I am flying because I don't have to count on having the right number of the right kind of people showing up.
So maybe you have fun every single night with the current subscription level and don't think the numbers are falling. But I have been playing the game a long time. Since I don't fly/win much, my rank is always close to last and let me tell you that my rank is moving up even though I am last... from 1500 to 1200 in the space of a couple of months. If that's not dwindling numbers, I don't know what is.
Now given that my son has a PC equal to mine and access to a HOTAS, he is the guy you want to try out and fall in love with the game. He played Aces High offline frequently between 3 and 5 years old. But despite being raised by an aviation nut, he has no use for flight sims in general, much less a very competitive one requiring hours of play to get up to the skill level required to survive in the main arena. He is almost 12 now and loves shooters like Star Wars Battlefront, Halo, and more recently Fortnite. If you can't get someone with access to the best hardware to even try the game, who are you going to get to play the game?
Apparently, people obsessed with being a fighter pilot are becoming fewer and fewer as a percentage of the market or even worse as an absolute number. I don't know why that is? DCS World is a pretty small niche game filled with the same 40-50 year old pilots as Aces High. Most of the players use Warthog HOTAS controllers and have a decent rig. But a pleasant surprise during a forum post about how old everyone is hit the average age of about 40 because for every guy in the 60 to 80 year old bracket (one that I am rapidly approaching as I will be 51 in Feb) there was some 16 to 20 year old who had access to a decent rig via their father and fell in love with combat flight sims. So maybe the market won't ever grow back to what it once was, but at least it may stabilize at a level to support continued game development.
If the majority of Aces High subscribers are people who have been playing on or before 2008 and that doesn't change very soon, then it is end of Aces High. No amount of marketing kept horse carriages selling well once cars took over the market. Perhaps there is nothing Hitech can do because younger generations simply don't want or like what he is selling.
Third Wire was a single developer with some contracted graphic artists. Its core game, the Strike Fighters/Wings Over XXX series became less and less profitable until it went into the red trying to update the terrain engine and sell expansion packs. Now Third Wire has free-to-play mobile games with ads and in-game purchases. If you played the PC games, you can see how much he ported over to the mobile market. You can also see how he dumbed down what was already a lite sim to appeal to a younger generation that doesn't appreciate realism... just decent graphics, lots of action and always winning no matter the odds. If Aces High is to have a future with a much larger number of subscribers, it may be as tablet game. However, that is not what I like/want, so I am left behind by companies that abandon realistic flight sims for arcade profits.
HTC needs to do what will keep their paychecks rolling in, not just try to please old fliers like me. I don't want to see Aces High change or go out of business. But it is going to be one or the other. I don't know how Warbirds has lingered on for so long. When I started flying in fall of 2000, Warbirds R2.77 was still up and Aces High was just getting its membership up. I liked Warbirds, but immediately recognized Aces High was Warbirds on steroids... much better at everything. Aces High no longer has that status. Their are competitors such as the latest IL-2:Battle Over xxx series that has great graphics, decent VR support, and aside from no support for massive arenas, better in almost every other way. Ironically, I fly IL-2:BoX much less frequently than Aces High. Maybe out of loyalty? Or preference for the much larger plane set? But most of my limited free time is spent flying DCS World. I like F-86s, MiG-15s, F-5Es, MiG-21s, F-15s, F/A-18s, MiG-29s, and Su-27s just as much as WW2 aircraft. I enjoy the DCS WW2 aircraft even more than Aces High, they just don't have all of the classics yet. Once it has P-38s, F4Us, F6Fs, A6Ms, etc., I will have little reason to come here any more other than just to show my support.
