Major differences?
Axis vs. Allies
Rotating plane and map set every week. We get all sorts of great stuff including new skins once in a while.
Friendly atmosphere (as long as shane, hawk and odee behave and the MA isnt down)

No winners and losers as far as country goes. If somebody 'resets' the map, the arena tends to crash and everybody has to go home for a few hours. Base capture is rarely the point and in fact tends to be looked down on.
Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be slightly organized and people often try to recreate historical type encounters. Last really great example of this was probably Big Week map, but we are always trying new stuff. I hope the IJN try to put together some kind of carrier hunt thursday, its just the val is too slow and useless against an f6f, but I digress.
We also discuss what kind of maps we would like to see and what kind of matchups.
Numbers tend to be 50 or less often 20 or less. This leads to more 1 on 1 type battles. People will argue this, but that is what I see.
The best part of it that I see is the plane matchups. It is much easier to use planes the way there were historically if you are not running into la7s with your 109e.