I had to weigh in here. Even though I really am not involved in this new resurgance, my experience on this issue might help. I am one of only a handful of people here who can say they only missed two months of TMBO's 54 month life cycle. We knew a lot. We really did. just take a look at Venom who is clearly kickin' mega ass this go round, and I'm pretty sure the guy is rusty. You should have seen him in 2007.
Very few of the "old night crew" are involved in this new attempt at TMBO. Hell, I think only Venom or Darkforce can claim it. Magnum had mostly moved on for quite some time. Martyrr played, but he really didn't join our team rooms.
So, if anyone is interested, here is what the old night crew (Myself, Stitches, Venom, Legend, Mito, Apocalypse, Kemmler, Terror Weapon, EA, Mikey . . . and I probably forgot a few other notables like Hi, but you get the point) discovered in the last few years, and especially the last few months, of TMBO:
OTHER THAN NO HEALTHS OR ENVIROS IN LMS MODE in many many ways, many of the TMA rules just plain sucked, and worse, they damaged some of the best parts of what made TMBO fun. In some ways they really really really messed up an awesome game.
The biggest mistake was net damage. Net damage convinced all of TMA that big cars sucked. They didn't suck. Manslaughter could mop the floor with a whole room, and Darkside would make almost everyone her bitch, but the problem was net damage made armor irrelevant, and so suddenly big cars blew chunks.
Then you have the problem of nerfing some of the coolest cars in the game. Axel, C8, Shadow, Outlaw - they were all nerfed in an effort to balance for FFA or one on one.
The thing is that is a joke. The game was too imbalanced to ever balance for FFA, or one on one, and that's why to this day I don't think it's worth playing if FFA is what you want to do. TEAM games is where TMBO shines, and it's what kept the night crew coming back year after year.
IF you are playing team games who gives a flying frak about uber powered cars? TM2 had similar issues. It's cars aren't really balanced at all, but none of the TM2 crowd cared because in team games, as long as you carefully balance out the teams (i.e. if one team has a full bloody Axel then give the other team a C8 and a Shadow) no one cares and all the cool cars remain cool cars.
So that's what we learned. The last few weeks of the game we finally just decided to let any car go FULL POWERED as long as each team was carefully balanced, and I'll be damned it was so much fun.
Then they pulled the plug on the server. Damn it to hell . . .
I realize this might sound like pissing on the sacred laws of really old school thinking, but trust me. We did it, it rocked. The only car we never really figured out what to do with was Warthog because, sadly, he is such a frickin' blow torch that in team games no matter how hard you try even your own team ends up a bunch of toasted marshmellows.
Edit: Really, I wish I could get accross how much fun it was. My first two years of TMBO were spent accusing other people of being cheap. It seemed to be what most of us did all the time. The final years of TMBO we didn't allow any of that garbage. We had a handful of rules - no healths, no respawns - and that's about it.
People gas canned you through the floors. We satellite shot you through ship's ceiling. You'd get Shadow or Junkyard bombed from accross a level. You'd get coned by Sweetooth as he jumped off a skyscraper.
By not giving a shit about what moves were allowed and what weren't, we all got a chance to shine and shine big. It was amazing all the creative things that could happen and did happen. You'd get double frozen because people timed it through the cheap shot (some got so mad at this move they quit playing but those who remained found the way to counter it, and we were always glad we didn't ban it). Attack, counter, attack again . . . it was so damn creative because people were allowed to be creative.
I miss it.