"Variants, by their nature, are experimental, unbalanced, and generally get boring quickly because they lack the subtle nuances and attention to detail that the original Diplomacy map has."
I disagree. I think the variants provide many more opportunities for "nuances" and far more strategic development, because it is often new territory, requiring the player to really test his skills in dramatically new situations. Playing thousands upon thousands of classic games makes it easy to predict those subtle nuances of the game, and when everyone knows that, they typically resolve the same way. That, IMO is boring. The most interesting and fun nuances of the game are the new ones that you have to negotiate without previous knowledge, making it more realistic anyway because you don't typically fight the same war over and over again. That's why I prefer this site, more fun to play variants, Oli's work with the features is amazing (the "preview" feature is a God-send), and the players here are much, much better and exceedingly cooler than the moldy figs over at Webdip.