I hafta ask, if you are willing to pay for the head to head rooms..Why not just play in the arenas?
Well, there were things you could get away with on a h2h server that won't ever happen on the MAs. Everything from some night-time fighting i na moon or no-moon sky, to enabling the bombing crosshairs and 30k airspawns on certain "bomber's delight" maps, to even more gamey things like cranking up the damage on .303s to being as potent as the 30mm tater guns and turning down fuel burn so low that a 262 could stay airborn for two hours on a 1/4 tank.... all things you can only do now in offline mode and without bringing along your friends for some fun/challenges.
I miss H2H for one reason, me my brother and a couple friends many years ago used to play AH in H2H mode over our LAN. Even now I still own a second rig and wish H2H was still a component of the game, as I'd pickup a second stick and fly around with a mate (or like the good ol' days, have a couple friends over for a LAN evening where they bring their computers and some beer and we all play the same game(s) together over the LAN for the evening).
I understand why HTC did it, of the half-dozen friends who ever played AH over my LAN with me, I'm the only one who's made a paid subscritption. I think it should be re-enabled in a fashion for subscribers or other markets so HTC won't get the short end of the stick (one typical user paid subscription = 8 player LAN/H2H arena, offer an attractive package for any "computer cafe" or of the like operators, IE: $25.99 a month = 32 player capped LAN/H2H arena).
I'm sure they're going to revisit the feature in teh future, but there's a lot of other priorities they want to work on first.
