I've pretty much given up on NS2. It's going to be a mediocre game for public play and an awful game for competitive play. Their gameplay design decisions range from bad to meh, except for the few dumb choices they actually reverse years/months after we told them about it (the multiple commanders farce comes to mind).

Worst of all, the spark engine is a disaster. Currently, fps drops to 30-40 in heavy combat sitations during mid-/late-game even with my i5-2500k overclocked to 4.7 GHz. There is a 100-300ms delay, regardless of ping, from clicking mouse1 to attacks actually registering as hits for the client (kill messages, hit animations). The interp is hardcoded to 250ms. The maximum server tickrate is 30.

Flayra has posted that he thinks that the current engine performance is "almost at the point where" it doesn't affect balance. Max (their main engine dev) has posted that their aim is 100ms interp hardcoded at release.

Summer 2012...