FYI WWI: Source is getting a huge overhaul.Just because it mimicked realism didn't make it unplayable. It was the amount of asinine bugs the game has. I understand your point on the whole "Over the Top" thing, but that's what most of the player are waiting for. An arty barrage, a Whistle, a charge. Sounds quite fun to me.
Have you played on a trench event on NW? They were using cannons and inaccurate muskets and it was still pretty difficult to get across without being shot or hit by mortars, I admit yes it was fun to be in the adrenaline rush of being shot at but there was honestly no 'point' to the event, hence why they stopped hosting it, charging across to other trenches is all fine and dandy, but 'Battle' mode will basically have to be deleted from the whole game because I'm pretty sure if it were you charging my trench going 'Wooo! Realism yeaaah booi!" then I took over a Maxim MG and shot your entire torso to bits with bullets before you even took 3 steps out of your trench and that was you out for the entire round? Prettttyyy sure you wouldn't be going "Wooo yeah! Realism! I'm bleeding and dying slowly on the floor! Woo this is so awesome!". xD
Technically most battles would have to either be a Siege style, one team has lives and defends their trenches flag whilst the other waves constantly charge, or it'll just be a huge team deathmatch event with say, first to reach 100 kills. But that'd raise another problem as well, people will end up camping and sniping so events like that will drag on for 3-4 hours. It's all well and good doing realism but people don't have hours and hours to spare for one single event merely because some people 'wanted realism'. I'm not saying make it so you have to take 200 bullets before you die, I'm just saying one hit kills, rapid firing MG's and accurate rifles + we have sniper rifles now? How the hell are we supposed to even spawn without dying straight away xD The whole 'Halo' craze died away when people began spawn camping and sniping people constantly, so IE is gonna have to figure out a way to stop that other than 'We'll impose event rules' because not everyone follows the rules for roleplaying as demonstrated on PW. Alot of thought is going to have to go into either map design or weapon design, otherwise having a 'stormtrooper' class will be rendered moot if they can't even get out of their trench let alone charge. If you think about it, how many WWI games do you know of that are extremely popular compared to WWII games? WWI is hard to recreate because it literally was 'I'll charge, they won't expect it. Oh wait..." so recreating a fun game is difficult unless you move away from realism, for example The Great War mod for N:TW would work perfectly because you have 1000's of men and machine guns that aren't 100% accurate due to a good balancing system. But when it comes to player controlled combat, you can't have 1000's of players but you can nerf MG's so they're not devastating. Games like 'Battlefield 1918' had accurate firing MG's and rifles, thats the kind of thing you should play if you want to have realism but I can't guarantee they'll be 'fun' seeing as barely anyone plays BF 18 anymore, when I went on it a while back there was a server with about 3 people on. I don't want to see IE become a dead mod merely because a few people stamped their feet and said they wanted realism.
In Napoleonic Wars line-battles you line up in 10-20 man lines and have 'blocking melee' wars, no one blocks bayonets left, right, up and down and spins around in real life you do realise? xD In normal Warband you can get sliced round the face by a short sword and hit in the leg by a mace, yet still have enough strength to swing your greatsword into someones skull. If you want to make IE realistic, do it on another engine because Warband wasn't meant to be the next Red Orchestra FPS realism shooter and it won't work if you try make it that. That's the point I'm saying, taking everything into consideration, accurate weapons, big grenade areas, lots of artillery and barely any people surviving, yes it will be realistic to real history in that sense, but it will also create huge standstills and stalemates which again, is realistic to WWI, but it won't work for a competitive game that has 1 hour events.
End of my rant for tonight!