Some history starting with my influence in the direction of VW since VW5.
VW5 in terms of performance requirements was very lenient, which led to one of the most massive debates we ever had on this forum about FPS and stability. I had ran a poll for the people to vote what they wanted better and they chose 30 FPS min, 300 ms ping with auto-kickig as we had mistrust of admins favourably kicking who they wanted, led to a huge drama with the admin board and caused serious problems but I digress, it all started there. We granted them that wish in VW6 as a promise to perform better.
Despite enforcing that limitation on the community that made many of our problematic members in VW5 unable to play VW6, we saw a substantial increase in turnup rates, VW5 held around at least 20 players the entire 24 hours, peaking at 40s. VW6 held 35 players for 24 hours peaking in the 50s. VW7 which got stricter on the ping side, has to date the biggest turnup rate yet, being currently the strictest VW ever set. Barely fell below 50 players much of the 24 hours with a peak of 70 players.
Year after year we have proven the point wrong that less restriction equals more players to play, what it equals to is an unenjoyable experience that make players quit, everytime. I can attest that many of our problematic persons in VW5 that missed VW6 made the effort to buy a new PC capable of VW7 which is why the player count got so drastically high. Other factors may be in play too such as the time of the year it was held and the huge delay but for VW8 it may be no different.
Do not cater for complacency and mediocrity, the playerbase has continually been proving that if they really want to play that bad, they'll find the way to do so. As such, Im not in favour of the lag hour, ruins the quality of the event and accomplishes nothing to VC:MP's problem, which is, this influx of laggy unstable players which I think is more deceiving than honest. Plus, I would like to do more grandiose things for future Vice Wars which requires the community to move up in their systems. Gone are the days of near 20 year old technology on every level as I know you cant enjoy a lot of things on those anymore. Something as simple as YouTube isnt very possible.