It's probably best to look at it as a person's "golden age" in a flight sim. I guess I believe it's the newness of it at the time and the first real exposure to the online flight sim world.
It's not accurate to say airwarrior was a better game, but a lot of us were introduced to this world in that game. My early time in Airwarrior and the early Nomads time will always be the 'best time' as it was so new and so much fun. I can still remember individual flights from that time and it's been 10 years now.
I'm sure the guys who started out with numbers for ID's in the very early AW would consider that their 'golden time'.
Expectations change over time but looking for that fun is always there. The last few months have come close for me in the game to matching that early time, but again, I'm older and a bit more jaded then i was then.
I think, and I believe it's an objective opinion, that Air Warrior pre Gamestorm was a superior game environment. I have virtually no experience with Warbirds or CK aside from a single sortie during the beta so I can't speak of that environment.
The reason was that the map design with the central/neutrals concept channeled the action together leading to a merging of interests. Not perfect by any means, and still weak from a pure strat perspective, but more fulfilling from a "fun" action standpoint. I even dropped a few bombs back in the day. Milkrunning was limited due to the basic map structure. Hordes, as such, were automatically forced to converge. That changed with Gamestorm, where a more open “huge” map concept was put in place to make up for server/numbers limitations. As bad as the hordes and milkrunning can be here, it was terrible there. There were days where you just could not find a single entertaining fight at all, even if you flew 2 sectors or more to sneak into one.
As to “sentimental" feelings clouding impressions... I watched AW change in Real Time with real markers of change. I can actually remember, after being away from the game for the first year of gamestorm (starting immediately after the buggy BigWeek introductory mission), rejoining the new "community." On about the first sortie up in the huge new arena with huge new numbers, I followed a high P-51 for over two sectors roughly waiting for it to attack, only to have it die dive bombing an undefended base well to the rear. That was unthinkable as little as a year earlier. I was honestly shocked enough to e-mail a friend who had left AW earlier about it... "Hey Chris, you won't believe what has happened to the game..." Previously, that P-51 would have dropped ord and began the B&Z. The new, hugely populated GS arenas had changed 180 deg. in about 12 months. Sound familiar AHers
AW, in my experience dating back to 1993/94 had always been heavily, almost exclusively, an A2A combat sim with action facilitated by the other elements which clearly played a secondary role. You could hardly find a bombing tutorial, but there were plenty of A2A plane match up tutorials. I believe even this player named "Pyro" (as I recall -- it's been a while) authored some of those tutorials and chat sessions. I seem to remeber at least one on the P-38. And, who today would understand the phrase: "Read Shaw" or actually bother to go out and do that?
That early SVGA AW "air combat" attitude was in full force when I came here about 2001 or so. But, that later Gamestorm "horde/milkrun" attitude gradually started to take over the MA, I would say about the time of the first huge Tiffie raids in 2003 or so. Again, you could see it happeining in real time. Perhaps it was facilitated by the death of AW and the arrival of the GS crowd or it's just a natural progression if the environment allows it to happen or both.
Aces High has better physics, more accurate plane performance models, eye candy that crushes the best AW ever offered and a huge potential to move into something extraordinary on the strat front. However, we still have the limited AW strat model with the big open map model that facilitates least common denominator style of gameplay (as was seen in the Gamestorm era) -- even with the new arenas today. What's frustrating to me is that the tools are there to make AH the "perfect" WW2 air combat simulator -- A2A combat, local tactics and strategy -- far beyond what AW provided even in the SVGA years. I keep paying, upping for an hour here or there and generally enjoying my ROI at $15 a month, while waiting for it to catch back up the SVGA fun quotient and then massively surpass it in the gaming environment area.
One thing I have faith in is that both HT and Pyro are enthusiasts. They have played these games from the beginning, developed several, and not only have a business objective but I believe understand what fun can really mean in these games. Further, and I may be totally off base here, I ultimately believe their idea of fun and mine are probably not too far apart. I get the impression that, even with their limited resources (much preferable to an EA with all its resources to waste), it will all get sorted out in the end.
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