I wouldnt just look at every "clone" as a threat or a reason of customer loss. The ones worth mentioning, developed further themselves and i would keep a close eye to what they changed and how the players and the game is affected by the changes. Even if you dont want to "rip" or "clone" what somebody else has "invented", it will still give you a better idea of what you cant or shouldnt do.
Personally the "clones" i am participating in, are running with ticks between 10 to 60 seconds. That isnt even offered by PA AFAIK - only once every few months (maybe) at some party. What is the state of "speed-pa" versions of the "original" PA?
The speed-pa clones run "around the clock" and if one round is ended, 2 days later the next one starts. Yes that means a single round doesnt mean that much and it does wear people off if they play every round, but the good thing is that you can choose when you want to play and not vice versa and also it isnt that much of a problem if you get completely wasted in one round.
Some people who play the clones, also play PA, others dont like the many changes in PA and prefer to play a clone with rd4 rules/stats as they dont want to re-learn everything "constantly". This isnt a judgement that the changes in PA are bad, but simply that some people dont want to "relearn" the game all the time.
And ofc there are those who wouldnt pay for this kind (or any) of game and therefore play a free clone. I can try all kind of things in a free clone, in PA it would often cost me a credit and i could only test one playstyle each 3 or 4 months "legally" cause otherwise it would be multiing.
I personally think games like E** are a way bigger "threat" to PA then the clones are.
One word about the technical side (and i assume here that PA is still html+css+perl/php and a itsy bitsy jscript maybe). PA seems to insist very much on the pure "browser only" approach (even though i remember that 5th season/spinner had much bigger plans for the future some years ago). If you follow the software development scene, you have noticed that there is a heavy trend making more and more companies/developers go a slightly different approach due to the ultimately limiting "pure browser" abilities in regard to the UI. I'm talking about the thin rich client approach here.
Apart from that - "browser only" means much more then "html+css+jscript" anyway. Nowadays you would need to include applets, thin rich client technology and flash at least and all three of them extend the possibilities quite a lot.
Maybe you should have a very close look at some technology and make a honest judgement about it because things _did_ evolve the last 4 years
