Strat is what really put the fork in siege. It was already a pretty big(and VERY thankless) task to get the server populated. Once strat started rolling, you could just expect the population to utterly disintegrate at least a few times a day, effectively making a consistently decent population all but impossible. It got to the point where a group of my rl friends and I would play at shit population(which I fucking hate, I find battle at any population 10 times more enjoyable than sub-40 siege) for hours, only to finally get 50+ people, a large number of which shit on us "verbally" and whined about losing the whole time. Once Strat started rolling, you could expect an even harder time populating the place only to have almost the entire server stripped away whenever a battle started. The few strat battles I've participated in since I started playing again, I saw so many people that I haven't seen in a regular server since returning. It just seems like there are a ton of strat-only players now.
The game mode is just too dependent on population, both for enjoyment and for map balance. I very seriously wish that the people in control would let us toy with another game mode on NA_2 for a while. I've been saying for a while now that this community needs to give capture the flag a try. I've played it a bit and on the right map it seriously feels like the most balanced mode. I haven't gotten to play the.. search and destroy?.... the thing where you take turns defending a catapult and munitions cart, with a real population yet but it looks like it could be promising. Relatively small, mostly flat maps where cav marauding and agi flag running/harassing gives you a great objective based game where steel monsters don't get to camp the tops of ladders.
