Giggle Arlo. And don't think that the game isn't essential to the community. Sure there are some who fly and don't hang out, and others who hang out and don't fly, but without the game at the center of it, it's dead.
I'll piss my diapers any time I want. Most of you seem to have missed the point. Air Warriors will be always be Air Warriors -- that's fine, just as long as they recognize that this isn't AW, and that their dreams of what AW could be died with the game. It's time to build a new world.
And destroy these notions such as "scripted missions fail because of the griefers". We haven't had much of a problem with griefers until the latest batch of people signed up.

AW experience is useful, but it doesn't translate 100 percent to every online game out there.
The balance issue can also be solved. You know that it is possible to make missions compensate for balance.
In any case, having experienced 2-, 3- and 4- country wars, I haven't seen one model produce more balanced results than any other. We still get ridiculous imbalances with 3, worse than what I ever saw with two or four.
The notion "let the players fly any plane they want" I find the most limiting of all. It means that in the MA only a handful of mission profiles are going to be effective.
I like to fly the 202, for example, but the plane doesn't have a chance against late-war cannonbirds.