What? Wait…WHAT?
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Mark my words, they try to stomp into the War Thunder neighborhood… it’s not going to be pretty.
But, as always, I hope I’m wrong. More competition is always good for users.
I always wondered if there’s a way to teach war thunder kids how to step up and move from game to simming…
Yeah… Well this doesn’t look like that step…
Back in the day, long before War Thunder was a twinkle in somebody’s eye, there was Air Warrior and Warbirds. So, who’s yard are we talking about? 
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What once was, might not be what will be.
All I’m saying is that many sequels of glamorous products were abysmal compared to their forerunners.
Don’t make me reinstall SF2…
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Haha…mine is never uninstalled. It is sitting on a hard drive all ready to go I think…of course, it is the massively modded one. Man, multiplayer with SF2 would have been so incredible. Such a disappointment that wasn’t part of the plan.
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btw what will be the appeal of SF2 MP ? Plane set ? Just asking as FC3 is imo quite similar. And MAC, with MiG15, F86, MiG21, F5 can be something very close to that premise.
Talking about AirWarrior, WarBirds, Aces High, WWIIOL and the small numbers of players playing it to these days… I think it were different times back then 
I mean there were no other games with dedicated servers iirc. So these MMO games were the only way how to fight against other players in some reasonable ( > 4 ) numbers. At least thats how I remember it 
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Dynamic Campaign.
I mean a Vietnam Era Alpha Strike… what’s more to add?
DC is really broad term. Online DC player vs player is available for DCS.
Maybe something like coop MP DC players vs AIs?
Vietnam is of course interesting era . But for me DCS MiG19, MIG21 and F5 fits.
When I was playing Warbirds, there were often over 300 players in the ‘arena’. Each of them were paying $2 per hour for the privilege. There were many squads flying co-ordinated missions, with a historical plane set that advanced during the course of the month - so at the beginning of the month you were flying early war aircraft, and by the end, the late war hotrods became available…and on the last day, the Me262 was unlocked. It was a great experience.
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Agree with you. In the beginnings there were no other MP options iirc, so these MMO were really popular. These days players have sooo many options when it comes to MP fun.
I have same fond memories. Not from the beginning where it was 2$ per hour! though but enjoyed the MMO style of siming for sure.
My only concern is that it will be hard to recreat again imo.
I used to pay a subcription to play Fighter Ace, never transitioned to warbirds.
I had a friend who I played a ton of SF1/WoV/WoE/WoI MP with, as well as First Eagles. It was more limiting than the SP, due to only 8 planes per side, all had to be flyables, and only 2 types of plane per side, but it let us do things we can’t do in DCS.
Want to fly F-4Es with A-6Es against MiG-17s and Il-28s? SF would let you do that. Good times, let down by the loss of MP in SF2.
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That’s true…but, there is no real ‘modern’ mmo flight sim, War Thunder and World of Warplanes are not -real- mmos, they are games which offer multiplayer experience but on a limited scale, fights are 32vs32 where you click ‘to battle’ and the matchmaker finds a match for you.
There is still place for a real mmo like Air Warrior, Warbirds, Aces High was in the past, it’s just that there is no modern version of those games.
Lets hope Warbirds 2020 will be a modern mmo flight sim
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" There were many squads flying co-ordinated missions, with a historical plane set that advanced during the course of the month - so at the beginning of the month you were flying early war aircraft, and by the end, the late war hotrods became available…and on the last day, the Me262 was unlocked. It was a great experience."
This is legendary, I also played during these times… I have to say no other game has ever provided me experience like this, it was 20 years ago, but I still remember everything like it was yesterday, it was so great.
I think there was clear path right within War Thunder = arcade battles → realistic battles → and finally simulator battles.
I wrote ‘was’ as I heard some rumors that simulator battles are gone. But didn’t play WT in a while so can’t confirm.
It was up to the individual players to step up the game if they were interested. I know that some, after WT simulator battles, switched to games like IL2 BOX or DCS.
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Do any of them do combined arms? You’ve heard me wax on about the good times in WW2 Online, but that was probably the height of my online gaming experience. The planning, coordination, rehearsal, and execution for some of the ops was incredible. Over a thousand participants in some over a day. Battles that raged on land, air, and sea. For a short while I was in BEF command as RAF AVM (still scratching my head) and I can tell you that the folks their took their jobs seriously, even though it was a game. They had RL military backgrounds and applied their knowledge. Anyway, had not IL-2 (and Hyperlobby) come along, those of us wanting to fly may have stuck with a while longer.
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