Here's my position:
ATAG's main server offers something you can't get elsewhere online at the moment; consistent high bandwidth connection game server where you are pretty much guaranteed to encounter human enemy opposition in the air using the channel map. That's great. Whether people hover around Hawkinge or meet at angels 18 over the channel is a matter for people to decide on their own.
There are other servers out there that offer other options. If you want more structured missions and raids of a historical nature then try ACG's offering. Want instant dogfights then try the Repka stuff. 71sts server is wonderful as well when it is available. The reason I think we all get in knots over ATAG's style of play (mostly unstructured with symmetrical objectives - just my description of it) is that it has the appearance of "the only game in town" due to its regularly being the only highly populated server out there.
I'd love to get the ACG sever onto a fibre line in North America to guarantee good pings and bandwidth but I can't afford to. I'd love to code up my perfect mission but I don't have the time to get familiar enough with the mission builder to do it. Even then I'm not convinced that server ping or mission type are the issues when it comes to server population.
I don't think the current situation is perfect for anyone. Hopefully when the game is patched up to a point where we start gaining more pilots than we're losing then we'll start seeing a higher proportion of players who are willing to gather regularly for a different gameplay experience. In turn that should allow more servers to prosper and take away the problem of having to decide whether to log into a server that has 30 players on or a server that has 0.
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