About PvM functionality and all, I don't really give a damn, it's all easy. Anarchy has been fun because of wars, and the focus should be there. All the PvM focus has brought mass PvP way out of balance for too long. I'm guessing a really nice setting for wars would bring ALOT more customers then another PvM grind. You could even have something that spawns a chest of goodies after each control tower goes down, if that helps. Notum Wars is really unique for AO, and you should assign some people to it. Up the defensive mechanisms on towers, give players more hp and/or less damage. Less blitzkrieg please. Get the tower sites some real server power, so they can support at least 200 players (not saying that kinda zerg would be cool, but atm they lag with only 20 ppl).
With the new engine coming, could you really try to make Notum Wars stand out as the headliner of AO? This could be the strongest asset this game has. People don't play old games for the content or in some cases graphics, but they do play stuff like CS or Doom for the player to player combat and working gameplay.
Instead of making players die faster, you could make PvP more fast-faced by eliminating a 7 min rez+3 mins to get back to site, like on battlestation. If needed take tower hp down a notch. Make towers easier to get so players won't take shortcuts of making proper sites.
One idea could be to instance Notum Wars sites. Make some safezones, allow people to come and go as they like, possibly with a cooldown if they leave area. Drop the permaflagged for 5 hours if you don't have a towersite to get everyone to join. Make towerwars possible 24h in some way, so you can't lock a site to some weird time when noone is online. You could even let the personal effects of planting a tower stay as a buff in player NCU for 24 hours or so ingame time, so it doesn't feel like a waste.
