What ticks me off about all of this is the big green "server status: up!" message on the homepage. How will we know when they fix this without trying to log on every ten minutes like a rat in a skinner box?
The problem used to be that your footprint expands, so you're nearer more mobs. Pretty sure that's why they turned it off for combat. No other good reason to turn it off.
We had this in beta, it was part of a power set, problem was, you aggroed EVERYTHING. Giant robots are a great idea, but this problem would need to be addressed or people will be ticked.