I’m definitely in this same boat. It’s what sucked me into the Star Citizen Kickstarter back in the day. Fuck whatever MMO BS they came up with later on; I was in for Squadron 42, baby!
Unfortunately it seems like a lot of the folks working on story-based, campaign-centric space sims these days are just working with a lot less budget than, say, RGO here. The Hypergate game @BrianRubin linked above looks not too far above my memories of Wing Commander: Prophecy! :-D
I’d love to see the Double Damage guys take a crack at a Wing Commander/Freespace-style game someday. And given the major differences between RG1 and RGO, maybe that’s even possible.
The Privateer thing is definitely neat, and they’ve obviously done an excellent job achieving it, but yeah, I’m very much with you on this one, @stusser.