I do mention AW (I actually played AW 1992-1995 for those interested in ancient history) and that fact that we are still living with the legacy of its arena paradigm (for good or ill) to this day. It wasn't my purpose to do a history of on-line WW2 sims; if I were to do so, the contributions of AW would figure prominently.
I also might mention that AW demise was partially due to the fact that it didn't grow with the competition in many areas, and was not the prime competition for AH by the time AH came into being. In my opinion AW was already in a death spiral at that point. In my opinion it barely advanced in fundamental ways after version 1.2. I'm sure there were many reasons for AW flying off into the sunset, but the failure of AW to keep up with the industry standards was certainly one of them. In such a limited market, the successful tend to breed their own success (meeting the system science archetype of "success to the successful.") and once market share tips in favor one competitor the trend tends to snowball, and once the weaker competitor membership fails to maintain "critical mass" (roughly 200+ prime time in my estimation) in arena attendence, the death spiral accelerates. Players are then motivated to join the more active arenas of the competition. As an aside I think its a miracle that Warbirds is still around because they have failed to maintain the membership to retain that vital "critical mass" except perhaps in their special event arena's, which may be the only thing keeping that sim from complete collapse.
Warbirds marketing folks were totally clueless. They failed to see that the "tipping point" had approached that would lead to the inevitable fall in their market share, and to their eventual marginalization as a competitor. Their failure to actively compete for the old AW clients when AW went out of business was a horrible business blunder that could go down as a case study for Harvard Business School.
Unfortunately I don't see a viable way for Warbirds to recover. It is certainly in the interest of the overall community to see real competition in the industry.
Also, its pretty hard to review stuff that hasn't happened yet, or things don't have any information to base a review on. Speculation is easy, but also rather pointless, when there is nothing concrete to base ones arguments on.
Sure thing Drex! (:
