Thanks CptObvious. 
One is 3-sided, one is 2-sided. One is curated, one is not. I've talked to several people in the Scenarios that said they never bother playing the Melee. If they go in there at all, it is just to quickly check their convergence for the plane they are going to be flying in the Scenario.
Agreed. I'm wondering if events are really the better stealth product. It's pretty much marketed now as subscribe to our Melee, oh and there are some Scenarios on the side occasionally as well.
Maybe flip the script and focus and really super charge and expand the Scenario capabilities and market AH as:
"Sign up for duty and participate in monthly historical re-enactments of the WWII air war! Relive History. Change History! Oh, and we have a silly 3-chess piece Melee arena where you can go practice in between the main events." 
I've also said before (and was attacked), I think there should be event tickets. I'd like to try to draw in IL2 and DCS and WB and WWIIOL pilots in to participate in a event. Yes, they can open a subscription and then close it again, but most people won't do that. They don't know Hitech. The will assume that they will get screwed and charged an extra month, even though HTC makes it very easy to cancel. Asking someone to open an ongoing subscription is just psychologically a big ask.
But don't the numbers always trend up in winter when people are house-bound and then decline again once it warms up? It's just that year after year, it never trends up quite as high as the last year, and drops back down a little lower than the year before.
It was suggested that a Social Media Team be formed to produce regular content to hosted by HTC's official channels and web page (with Hitech's review of course). There are lots of talented people in this community and I think I've seen some people volunteer to help with that. It would be more powerful for new content to pushed through HTC's media and web channels so the company doesn't look like a mothballed dead museum. I understand HTC has extremely limit bandwidth and resources . I'm suggesting HTC should to help us, help them.
I don't know if anything like that is underway and just stealth.
FSO and the MA are 2 completely different approaches. FSO is AvA. FSO is organized with squad objectives, fso has one 1 life. Organizers keep it relatively balanced. It's not anywhere near the same as the MA from a strategic or gameplay point of view. Those players who only play FSO will still not play the MA even if it is 2 sided. The problem with 2 side is that one big squad will enter the arena. This will then create a huge embalance for one team that a lot of people will complain about. Auto balance would mess up squads and piss people off. Similar to what happened when the MA waa split back in 09, which IMO was detrimental to AH losing a lot of players.
The special events truely need more marketing. There is a huge opportunity there.
Just for craps and laughter, where does KOTH fit into this statement?
I hear and read people saying where's the fight? The Special Event that packs most dog-fighting/hour of any event we have barely gets enough players to even run it.
No front page website hype. No free month sub for winning. No free month sub for getting #1 in the MA. So many people are scared of competition now in this game, it's ridiculous.
Like said, overall there is just a lack of hype for most things.
Perhaps social media would work... Youtube commercials would work fairly well, especially with all the air combat movies lately.
Hitech creations being a 1-3 man army now makes it very challenging for hype and enthusiasm and updates to happen.
I hope that if hitech were to retire soon, that he sells it rather than just shutting it all down. Easier said than done tho.
