In my opinion most players that have played Multiplayer in the last 6+ months more than once have done so because the gameplay is excellent and they like it the way it is. It's true that beta_8 desynced and that that was frustrating and put some people off. But honestly, I don't remember anybody who hasn't returned after we switched back to beta_5. On the contrary, the fact that beta_5 can be installed without making vanilla unplayable seems to be easier for people and after the switch back we had an increase in players for a few weeks.
I don't think anybody wants beta_8 to work more than I do because of the (subjective) graphical improvement and flair and the work we've put into it. So after we've some conclusive robust online (LAN is all good and fine and TMS effort highly appreciated) results I'd love to play beta_8 rather than beta_5 and I'm certain that those who play beta_5 now will switch again with us.
I think that all who play MP now enjoy the timeframe, the setting, the reduced number of units and the balanced gameplay resulting from that. If we introduce the Mongols to that mix we double the number of overall units and change the gameplay to something entirely different. I'm absolutely not against the Mongols and will cooperate with barocca to introduce them into the mod. However, I think we should have several timeframes or eras. One would be the long tested and popular Sengoku era that we play now in MP (Why should we get rid of it?) and the second one would be the era where Mongols fight against the Japanese.
This also makes perfect sense from a historical as well as single player perspective. The Japanese army changes considerately in contrast to the Sengoku era because of missing guns and it will probably be necessary to adjust the stats of units to match the Mongols. The balancing of the Japanese and Mongol units will take some work and active playtesting, that can't be done on paper alone. Sure, we can and will come up with some starting stats (Orda has offered some stats) from where to take it and for SP it will be easier as units are modified by General *'s and valour anyway, but for MP where we want intuitive army purchasing at valour 0, we will have to work hard to achieve that.
If the new era draws more players that would be nice and if in the end more players want to play the Mongol era that's ok with me, too. But it's going to be a long way till then.
We've been saying that we want to make more eras and units available for SP and we will do that. I'm certain that we can agree on a roster for the Mongols very soon and there's enough space for those units, too. Once those units are finished and can be played with, we'll give them initial stats, perhaps based on the stats made by Orda for STW, set them against a roster of Japanese units with the same animations as beta_8 but with different stats and see how it goes. Once we can test them online I guess that positive and negative aspects become obvious pretty soon, seeing that we have a lot of game playing experience among all of us.

I think that when barocca says that he wants to get rid of all other eras he means the original vanilla eras. That's what he's been saying for a long time and he also always wanted to have several SP eras, Taira vs Minamoto, Mongol invasion and Sengoku iirc. So, no need to get nervous about the deleting of the Sengoku era. The unit stats of eras can be defined independently from the animations. After all this isn't Rome or M2.



R'as