If you take the time to sift through the negative comments over in Steam, you will notice a couple of things.
1. Maintaining a free account to zip around empty arenas is off putting and not worth their time.
2. Paying a sub fee to zip around an arena that doesn't really have steady player numbers is not worth their money or time.
This can be addressed with a few mid level FREE 24x7 rides, a real free account. Then for the WT weenies only when those few rides are in mouse mode flying give them a limited F3 mode. Make sure with mouse flying the rudder keys have authority on the ground. Only Lazor can abuse it and so what. I would recommend the few free rides cannot carry ordinance, just air to air ability. That would probably cut down on the chances of a persistent freeloader sub culture. Make all manned guns free and even give them one tank. PanzerF or T34\65 or an M4 and let them run supplies with the M3. Let them be bomber gunners, lord knows they might make some friends being helpful and want to upgrade and pay $14.95 to be with their friends.
Hardcore killer loners who play combat games are not the majority. It's people playing to be entertained with the possibility of being involved with other players accomplishing something together. Games today are social media nexus, entertainment, and accomplishing something in a sedentary culture. That is part of why WT is still with us becasue it targeted those factors from it's inception. The complaints at Steam are indicators of what none baby boomers are looking for. Baby boomers don't mind suffering for their fun, it's generational. The customers at Steam refuse to suffer to have fun and vote with their feet and wallets. All of these how to save AH discussions fail becasue the solutions are only appealing to baby boomers and our egos.
Any of you who play other games not DCS or IL2 know what I'm describing about none baby boomer game players. AH3 is not attractive to younger people as it's being made available to them now. AH becasue of it's low numbers in the MA is very slow, way too slow for the younger generations. All of you gents in this post should get a free account at PlanetSide 2 and play for a month. Then rethink the differences in game flow speed related to younger demographic game playing expectations. That is part of why I've taken up playing PlanetSide 2 so I can observe the only real demographic with any numbers out there for the future of AH. PS2 reminds me of the MA in 2007 and plays a lot like the MA back then right down to it being a 3 country war.
Hitech obviously knows something since PS2 can get upwards sometimes of 3000 players into an 8km x 8km arena.
You old fougies are missing the mark.