The point of the refresh (which can be activated with a meta tag) is that JavaScript is disabled in the game's server-rendered mode, so AJAX/Comet is out of the question.

You don't need JS to do long-polling, just keep the main page's connection open without writing the trailing `</html>`

This does limit what you can do with the poll-added content, but simply allowing the refresh to take place is a strict improvement over refreshing eagerly.