I don't understand what lowering the time standard will do other than fill the race up with different runners. That would NOT solve anything.
The race may take a little longer to close, but you'll still have angry people who didn't get in because they waited to long bitching about the standards. Right now there are probably 10-20,000 pissed off qualifiers or soon to be qualifiers from MCM, NY, etc, plenty of runners to fill it. What's the difference between a sell out in 8 hours and 8days and 8 weeks? You're still gonna have people miss out and bitch after it closes at some future arbitrary date.
They give everyone's qualifying time 18 months of life, so people running MCM, NY and other upcoming will just have to wait till 2012. That was clearly a risk they opted to take when they chose their fall marathon.
Increasing the field size by adding a 3rd wave is quite possibly no feasible due to pre-race capacity availability in Hopkinton.
I'm curious what you guys mean by "its becoming a joke", "it's watered down" etc.