Diz, thanks for your ever-so-helpful and late-in-coming wisdom.
Seriously, I don't want to do an uber-mod for EAW. I want OP D2 to work. If it can't be done by regression (making it work essentially like EAW with more races and using the OP tactical engine), then there are other avenues. Dave W's scripts might fix some of the map problems. Who knows -- maybe Artic will actually fix the whole thing.
Anyway, we have plenty of people who have given up on OP. It has always been a bastard child, made even more so by Taldren's shallow promises to fix it. I still think it can be better than EAW, giving us more options. I haven't given up yet.
As far as GSA play is concerned, I seem to remember a somewhat recent thought put forward that EAW would be the D2 game, OP the GSA game. If that's the intent from Taldren, it is pretty funny considering how few people play OP in GSA. Of course, the ever-present X-ship complaints will come out when people give their reasons for not playing OP via GSA, but we all know that people don't need to use Xes.
There will always be those who slam OP, for whatever reasons. Some are valid, some are BS. I don't ask people to play it if they don't want to, but I do think those who want to play it might be able to come up with new approaches to making it work.