I don't know about that. I think most evenly contested games in my area go to the time limit more often than to one sides death.

The reason for the change is clearly because of the "Podo/Tormented Soul Scenario" (make your army a Tormented Soul - surge to first objective - Tormented Soul dies - you win if you're the only one with an objective - if it goes to ties, you have the cheapest army).

While I can think of several ways to keep the spirit of the objectives and get rid of the above abuse (and it's close relatives), all of them are more complicated than WizKids probably wants.

I think that quite often control of the objectives won't matter. One side will be able to destroy the other before the time runs out. However, I also think objectives are the best change to the game and will impact gameplay the most. Why? Because they force players to be aggressive. You can't just sit and turtle and make the opponent come to you. You can't just kill one model than try to run and hide. You must engage and contest your enemy for control of the objectives. Since the center objective will be fiercely fought over, you must be willing to commit in force, while at the same time you can consider the possibility of trying to outmaneuver your enemy and go for the objective deep in their territory. If one player aggressively siezes the objectives the other can't just dance around avoiding arcs and hope to get in a shot eventually - they need to take the initiative and get those objectives away!
Even just using 1.0 rules, try playing with objectives and you will likely see much more aggressive and exciting play!
The problem with the game just 'ending' when one side was eliminated was not just a problem due to the podo power issue. Consider a situation in which your opponent has control of 2 objectives, but has all demoralized models. If they can just push those models to death before you can get the objectives, they win! Does this make any sense? Not a chance. It just creates silly situations with the potential for abuse.

The objectives are a clever addition to avoid stand-offs as they currently occur in competetive games. If the opponent decides to dig himself in, you can now conquer 2 objectives and make him come out.

Apart from that, you`ll have some problems killing everything off, because its all gonna come back with the new Necro rules. As long as you have more objectives in control, it doesnt matter whether your opponent killed your ZB 13 times or not.

Im afraid the game is coming down to who can eliminate the opposing necro-engine first.

Hopefully the necro rules will be getting overhauled to reflect that VPs are no longer the game decider. If not...well, it won't be pretty!

I have played several games using the 2.0 rules and the objectives do make the game more interesting and the players more aggressive. You constantly need to keep an eye on those objectives, and where your figures are, and the opponent's figures are in relation to them. I really like having objectives as a means for deciding a victor as opposed to points. By the way, do not count on the fact that you can necro a piece multiple times in one game.

I think its more important to keep an eye on the clock than on the objectives.

Unless you include a nice objective guarding team in your army, for example

Shield Golem*
Gunner***
Gunner***

would probably be a good one for just over 100 points.
The center objective is bound to be in reach of your gunners sitting on the home objective, so they can still add to the battle.

Well, this problem can be somewhat fixed by adapting MWDA's Salvage rule. In MWDA, you can't push a unit that's Salvage to death, because those units aren't allowed to push. You could just add that to the Demoralized rules. Unfortunately, that doesn't address those units that don't become Demoralized (such as the aformentioned Tormented Souls). This also further reduces the Goblin Volunteers usefulness (OK, so that isn't a major issue).

You could do this...but why? What would it gain the game other than more complexity?