Interesting topic and great stories. I played AH2 for six months and have been out of this game for a year or so. I miss it. I would like to say that it is just a game, but for me it is also an opportunity to feel some excitement of combat without the real life horror. I have always taken great interest in air combat tactics and this game is basically the only affordable way of experiencing it. I researched 1/12 scale radio controlled model airplane air combat, but that has little tactics involved. When I played online I did not imagined myself sitting in a real plane although I sometimes made flights after some movie or book. For example after watching "Dambusters" I took a formation of Lancs for a two hour NOE flight to enemy HQ and back. That was the only flight I made that day. Due to my patience I was best in bombers and GVs. To my surprise I really sucked in fighters, but I did not take this game serious enough to go to a DA or training arena.
In a real life I am a low hour commercial pilot, so I should get enough flying, but it is not like that. I have to fly where other people tell me to, follow the flight plan, be efficient and so on. It is a great job, but it misses some things that I have to find elsewhere.
I occasionally read this forum, check the number of online players and play in offline mode. Thus I am pretty sure I will return some day. The first thing I am going to do is take a Typhoon to a horde and make high speed passes and pulverize everything that is unlucky enough to get in the way.
Compared to some FPS games you actually have to think in AH2 and that is great. FPS seems to be all about good reaction speed and mashing buttons.
