NW NooB Question here, any answers?

I have just started playing AO, I purchased a CD in the store for 20bux and have been thoroughly enjoying my experience therein. I noticed the Notum Wars mentioned but thought nothing of it when I first started playing this game, now I am getting further in the game and have realized that altho purchased less than a month ago the CD I purchased did not include NW. From looking on the website it is a 10$ cd here and basically Im wondering am i gonna get screwed out of 20 more dollars, just to play the full game? My question then is if/when i would purchase the NW CD would i be recieving another free month? Seems i should after spending still another 20 bux jus to get the full game when NW is not really listing as a true expansion. Also I have to wonder if it didnt update to the NW just because the startup screens displayed for NW in the screenshots section are how the game looked for me and the startup screenshots that were with the CD were not at all what took place in character creation... a little clarification on this would be greatly appreciated especially since I now own 2 accounts. Really seems weak that NW would be an expansion, but not really... Any help would be appreciated

I'll see what I can say to help...

Seeing as how you are a newb, you probably wouldn't benefit greatly by buying NW. The tower combat and bonuses are for the most part geared toward higher level content, and though of course lower levels could fight if they wanted to, often can't get organized enough to put together a real battle. The "free month" included with NW is indeed a free month, but cannot be used towards an already existing account, and thus a new account must be created to take advantage of the free month, which is a pretty big screw over in the minds of many seeing as how you can't do much in a month anyway and would have to keep paying after that to get anything accomplished, and end up paying for 2 accounts when 99% of the time you only need 1.

The character creation screenshots... the character creation system was revamped about 2 weeks before NW was released from the original, uninformative, and largely ugly system (the one with the blue computer screens and whatnot) to the new colorful open-aired and much more helpful style. I take it you're seeing the blue one in the included screenshots. The correct new character creation one is the one that starts with you docking at the space station. However, it doesn't really have a bearing on whether you have NW installed or not, because the new creation process was put into place, as I said, about 2 weeks before NW came out, and so all players, whether they have NW or not, can see and use the new system.

Preciate the reply I was begining to wonder if newb's to the post got much response....
I will wait till NW would be something relevant to my chars to consider purchasing... I imagine the same will then go for the shadowlands, least thas how it was for EQ...

Kinna figured so and jus wondered altogether... thnx

Just to add alittle more info for you based on your 2nd post.

I wouldnt nec say you should rule out Shadowloands becuase your still a new player to AO. NW was for PvP, so that is not intened for new players, rather those that already have established characters. However, from what I hear ( no quotes please :P ) Shadowlands will actually have viable content for the still new player. New Classes ( Jump on the new class bandwagon and everyone will be new :P ), new weapons/armor/nano's/etc. These are things that I would belive if you ARE enjoying your AO experience, and dont see yourself leaving anytime soon, you may very well want to think about getting into.

No shamless plugs for AO, just tryin to help :)

Merry Part and Blessed Be,
~P~
Quik