Don't try turning a monster truck into a race car.

SOE's opinion? Money.

Well and good, except this stands a good chance of costing more than it rolls in, especially because they're seeking an audience that only barely connects to the one they already have.

Honestly I think one or two primetime TV ads would do them more good.

Yeah theres no way any team (48 or 24) would be able to be sponsored. They would seriously expect 48 players from across the world to be flown to a location to have a few rounds of PS2? Like you said, that's absurd and not happening. You've have to get the game down to AT MOST 10 players per team for it to be economically viable.

It's a waste of time to go for a competitive scene.

If it will require groups of 10 players in a game intended and advertised as a large-scale multi-front warzone MMO, that is taking the monster truck and trying to make a motorcycle out of it.

Yep, that's what Blizzard ran into when they made Arenas in WoW. Took a good amount of devs to balance it, still couldn't get it right and other areas of the game suffered.

Yet over and over again I hear the old "the people working on this are not the same as those working on other parts of the game".

That's pointlessly absurd. It's still money spent, money squandered, even if it's not the exact same people being paid.

The ones they fired?

It just occurred to me that part of the MLG push might be because doing it their way might be cheaper.

What do these so-called "professional gamers" often demand? One super-symmetrical or at least painstakingly overbalanced arena. Maybe 1-2 weapon types that meet their approval. Pre-ordained teams and lots of hype, hysteria, and hyperbolical statements of grandure from promoters and players.

That isn't expensive to make, at least if that's the intention from the start, compared to other types of games. Too bad we already have another game, so making it into yet another one of these WILL be expensive and waste time and resources.

Oh it's definitely cheaper and it's a quick band-aid to try and get population back. Last year over Christmas and going into the new years SOE took a 3 week hiatus and during that time players were leaving in droves because patches halted and ceased to exist. Then they came out with the roadmap and squandered that. New continents? None. Better performance? None. Outfits have fallen apart or have totally disbanded due to people leaving. SOE needs to get their act together and **** this whole WDS ******** that has been distracting players from the real issues of the game.

Thinking they employ a special type of person who spends all their time playing PS2 and went and got their bachelor's in "game balance" is a joke. The people balancing are the developers, they are either making new and fun content, or they are stuck trying to balance the different areas of the game.

I've been greatly disappointed by the complete halt of the "road map".

Sure, optimization is well and good and most MMOs have firebreathing screamers on their forums that say "STOP EVERYTHING DAY ONE BUGS FIX IT WHERE IS OPTIMIZATION!!!1" and in this case they got it.

We need content to look forward to. Even if I got double the FPS I got now, it would be a smoother look at the same thing.

I played WoW for years, and left when Blizzard's arena obsession was in full swing and they were nerfing and re-arranging every class due to what the "professionals" demanded, even outside of pvp.

I played Mechwarrior Online from its early days, and its continued preoccupation with trying to be MLG-friendly has resulted in a stagnant game with very little to do and only a handful of maps to do it in. Incredibly, the forums there are full of people demanding more or less a single "balanced" map with no objectives but deathmatch.

This game is even less designed around the idea of some stupid need to make every so tiny in scale and over "balanced" that no fun is allowed except for stat padders and egotists.