When people get to try it out and find out that the battles aren't over large areas and are actually quite concentrated by game design,
Did you fly on Hyperlobby DF servers? 99% of servers had 2 airfields and people would dogfight somewhere in the middle. It's the same here, and the maps were the same size also if not some were smaller.
that there aren't boats and tanks to drive currently,
Because this is a flight sim first, boats and tanks will come later.
that there aren't many people (32 people max) on each map,
That's only instant mode, World war will be bigger.
and that they are limited to a single anemic aircraft until they level up so many people will be ooing and awwing over it.
In HL il2 online wars you didn't had a choice of plane at all. You had 1 plane for current year and side and you had to fly it for weeks and everyone liked it.
Oh, and the external view that has a gunsight is very sim like too.
You can turn it off.