Furbs ... with all due respect ... but are you really thinking this MMO idea is Luthier's? If so then ROFL. ;)
I think this is the "money men" - as you call them - who have produced that idea from the depths of their collective ideas hat. 1C even installed a dedicated "online services department" (not just for this MMO but in general) so I guess this is a corporation-wide trend to develop such products.

You have hit the nail on the head there furbs mate

Exactly.

Brought to you by the same folks that forced Steam on the project and helped delay development and the release too.

guys, I don't want to shoot your horses.. but I'm almost sure that when 1C & MG are talking about "MMO", they are only talking about the MMO payment model: a monthly fee everyone has to pay in order to can play the game. I'm pretty sure the game & gameplay will remain roughly the same (ie as "good" as it is atm).

Also, this doesn't sound so bad for offliners as you would think: due to the nature of the game (a ww2 sim) and its niche market, they HAVE to add some development for the AI in order to fill the persistent battlefield when the players are not there. you can't have a war happening around you with only a hundred of players online. that's what's missing atm in IL2CoD, and that's what will miss in this "online" version too.

If they really think about going into the MMO gameplay model, they're over: they were not able to pull this off as it is, going into the much more complicated MMO programming issues (on-fly server load balancing, etc, etc) would be like shooting themselves in their own foot..

thing is, no matter which way they'll go with this, War Thunder is already 1-2 years ahead of them with this: War Thunder IS playing like a MMO atm (battles are instanced dungeons, while the campaign mode is the persistent battlefield).. I see rough seas ahead for our dear IL2 series, unfortunately :(

Well mate, Luthier brought us "SpitGirl" and told us to "trust him on it" so all bets are off. :)

Who knows where the idea came from, were just guessing, but if COD had been a success, i dont think we would be talking about a MMO do you?

Which is why I wonder how 1C expects to draw anyone from community servers. MG wouldn't know good gameplay if it bit them in the hinder.

Not so fast. I remember Oleg talking about such ideas way back (when Il-2 was in its infancy). He probably tried to sell the idea of a new engine by mentioning such possibilities and the thought has stuck with the "money men". That's IMO the most likely scenario.

Yes that's true, i had forgot that. Its prob a mixture of all these things mate, oh to be a fly on the wall in the meetings. :grin:

With all the respect Furbs ...

There nothing that Maddox can made that can´t be bashed by you, in fact everything is bashed by you.

But ... bashing the SpitGirl ? ... man ... that´s very low :cry:

Me? bashing Spitgirl? Dont be so disgusting Blackadder!

I feel the same way, I wish that they would leave out those childish extras.