A friend who played EVE had a Beta key. The game promised complex large scale combined arms battles where the skill of individual players and the ability of leaders to organize would really matter. The promise of persistence for your victory or loss. The true sense of loss when your clone died with all its gear.

That was the lure. I took my first dropship flight the day after they received their realistic flight mechanics and I was hooked. Here was a truly skill based flying vehicle in an FPS! I dreamt of how they could be used as troop transports after finding my position overrun by a troop drop in an early corporate battle (recounted in my Dropship FlightSchool thread).

I championed the new Dropship through release after release, enduring flight ceilings, explosive paint, and over powered swarm launchers, occasionally indulging in the guilty pleasure of being an overpowered "death from above" when the pendulum swung too far my way. I tried to explain the new flight mechanics to new players and build a dedicate cadre of pilots who would prove their worth when the maps opened up and we were truly needed. The future was SO bright...

Alas, CCP never delivered. They turned my beloved dropship into a simple gun platform which had to compete by killing infantry, lacking any role to call its own. The dropship was still a skilled platform, but it didn't have anything to do. I was frustrated.

Eventually I stopped playing when I realized it was never going to change. Project Nova revives the promise, though it will take a long time before we learn if it will deliver.