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So, not hubris or pure conjecture. This thread, for all its size and how fast it grows, hasn't managed to attract as much attention in two months as the one about offline got in just six days.
Here is a little UK news company's report on offlinegate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30097229
They quote "rock paper shotgun" (I don't know much about review sites but IIRC DBOBE did an interview with them, so he values their opinion)... I quote...
"Alec Meer from game news site Rock Paper Shotgun said
Frontier was "playing with fire" by deciding to drop the offline version.
"This is a game
that's gone a long way on goodwill so far, and endangering that is a high-stakes game," he said.
Elite had its origins as an offline, entirely single-player game, he said, and many people were expecting to see something similar in the 2014 version.
"The dynamic universe features may be impressive
but some players prefer to not have their game-world even slightly affected by others," he said, adding that the pressure was now on Frontier to amply demonstrate that those server-side features did produce a better game.
Mr Meer added that
in many countries the kind of stable, fast internet connection the game will require is not available.
"Elite's exactly the kind of game that someone bored out of their mind in the back of beyond would want to disappear into for hours at a time, and perhaps now they won't be able to," he said."
I doubt it was a decision FD took lightly on the basis of the previous, they could and should have handled the PR side better, a lot better, but I believe them when they say they really were trying right up to the time they realised they couldn't make it work. We need to remember this was in the rush to get the game as good a they could for launch, a deadline that many, many people said was too early, but it is what it is.
"Eureka" I think I found the underlying issue here, not for everything but a decent chunk of the issue (and it just hit me whilst re rereading my post before I hit "send", the RPS quote)
Lots of people have been here as I have for 10 months (PB1), many more than a year before that with the Alpha's & the KS backers before that too (without them there would be no game), we realise that FD are a bunch of grafters, releasing daily patches for a few days after updates broke stuff, when I first joined many Alpha backers were in the open forums (they had their own forum too) and helped out all of us newbs with questions, the forums were a better place back then.
FD got "crowd sourced pizza" delivered to their office on the evenings they all had to stay late for the updates, sent by happy fans that knew they were going to spend the next few days filling out lots of bug reports to make the game better (yes that's beta, I get it).
These people have seen the game grow from bare bones & watched things being added (my first beta & glad I joined back then, I have enjoyed the whole experience), they understand there is a lot more to be added, it will come, the "sticky" wanted status to help BH's, boost for proper pirates and consequences for PK's are on the way, this one thing will get people (like myself) back into open (even though its not the reason I left open), if done well it would be enough to make me seriously consider spending a lot more time there!.
This pushes the game in the direction I would expect it to go based on the original (and DDA), Anarchy's are a safe place for pirates to call home, somewhere that a lakon pilot won't go without an escort (or 3).
Safe systems are somewhere that pirates are hunted by CMDR's & AI, places that mass murderers don't want to visit but a pirate who accidentally blew up a ship last week might spend a little time looking at before the heat got increased, and a "psycho" RP player might go there but boy when he gets spotted they will call out the "national guard" for that bad boy if he killed 5 of their pilots, they don't like him at all.
I think a lot of the misunderstandings come from people joining more recently & thinking this is a PVP game, if it was meant to be "mass battles", "player blockades" & "player owned systems" they would have gone for the Client / Server set up from day 1 and charged a sub for it, but they didn't.
Once FD implement the "stick bounty's" and make the Anarchy's more dangerous than safe systems it will make a lot more sense, its part of what should be here but isn't yet, the ability to destroy anyone you want to has been here since day 1 (it happened a lot less 6 - 9 months ago though), the consequences for doing it are imminent & I hope it includes proper consequences to major faction reputation too.
TLDR
The update that stops PK's paying off a tiny bounty & makes the punishment fit the crime will get (some) more people in open (some might not be lots on day 1, but it will spread in a little time IMO to some of the open players that have left & some that are thinking of joining open from other groups).
This should make PKing more "rare & meaningful", whilst allowing anyone who wants to PVP to still meet in an anarchy system & blow each other to bits to their hearts content without consequences of regulated systems.