Just to give my opinion on the patching issue...
Ideally if EA said they would definitely support a patch the best thing they could do was temporarily put 1.007 on the server for 2 or 3 months as a kind of beta test (like Blizzard, Relic and probably few other companies have done with major patches). All you need is plenty of spam in the lobbies from XWIS bots pointing out it's a beta and where you need to go to give feedback and stuff, just so everyone knows what's happening.
This way every one gets to play and test for a little while and give informed opinions at the end of the testing period. Like Joku says a vote would only work if everyone was aware of exactly what they were dealing with. Some people who don't like the idea of 1.007 might come to like it, and equally some will probably hate it. But a couple of months gives everyone a chance to test it properly; no knee-jerk reactions like "OMG derricks walled WTF ghey!" - everyone has at least a reasonably informed opinion.
After the beta period is over people can then give really useful feedback. Maybe they want 1.006 back, maybe they want 1.007 to stay the proper version. More likely I think is that people will want a bit of both, and the patch that becomes "official" (let's call it 1.008) would represent that. After all 1.007 is just one proposal, and it's very much my view of how the game should be. I'm not stupid enough to think that means it's perfect, in fact far from it, but I think it's a good reference point. With everyone experiencing both 1.006 and 1.007 for a decent period of time we could probably create the ultimate version of the game. My hope is that ultimate would be a lot like the existing 1.007, but of course I'm prepared to be wrong.
As for what that means for the game, who knows? I suspect it would be like when XWIS was made the official server: there would initially be a big boost in server activity. Whether it would last is another thing. Maybe it will, after all a new patch is arguably a more substantial change than switching servers.
Edited by [-BA-] Piscinex, 26 February 2008 - 10:33 PM.