You're immediately building on the tenet that 'biggest' is the innevitable progression of success and in fact necessary. I can counter that easily, then we are just two unsupported opinions balancing each other out.
Isn't it obvious? Aces High is an online game, it needs paying customers to be alive. The more people, HTC gets a higher revenue and in-game more people play.
AH's attraction might as equally be in its differences.
You are basing this on assumption.
I base my conclusions on facts and statistics which has been presented numerous times on the forum not only by me but by other folks also.
How do you prove the correlation? I think you cannot.
Simple, when someone hears 'ww 2 flight sim' instantly what pops up in his head, is axis vs allies and not '3 sides and all planes vs all planes'
Why, if i may ask, are you here Nuget. If AH has so much so wrong, you don't like the pay model, you don't like the early war / late war plane mismatch, the three sides and so on, why aren't you, say, playing White Cliffs of Dover and accepting AH's differences. Are you a leading champion of Globalization perhaps?
I don't mind pay model.
Like you said, early / late war is a mismatch, three sides might work with 500 players, but there are no more 500 players.
AH is the only flight sim mmo, that's why i'm here.