What this all comes down to is 'what kind of game do you want to play?' What *I* would like from an 'online WWII air combat sim', is...
1) Historical Air Combat -- that conveys the same feel that I get from reading books like 'The First and The Last', 'Wing Leader', and many others.
2) Dogfighting -- lots of combat in lots of different planes, fighting with and against lots of different pilots, who are themselves flying lots of different planes.
Instead of these two things, AH (and AW) provide much more of this...
3) Age of Empires -- with airplanes, of course. Just a vaguely historically based strategy game (or it might be more accurate to say numbers game), played with wonderfully modeled WWII aircraft.
But as long as long as there's the chance of a scenario in the not-too-far future (#1), and I can manage to find a few good fights (#2) under the canopy of F4s in the arena, I can put up with a lotta #3.
anRky
-Ih8ubb