HA HA at you
I just wanted to take a minute and gloat over anyone who bought NW, which from what I understand is like 90% of the players.
Why?
Because I didn't pay $20 extra or whatever NW is retailing for now, and missed out on great features like:
1. Towers which need to be defended almost all the time and chances are if anyone is really going to annihilate your base it's going to be while none of your guild is on, unless you're one of the lucky masses in a super-mega-huge-guild. You know, one of those guilds that invites anyone, and half of the members rode the short bus to school (or perhaps still do.)
2. New planes! Well, I'll admit, these are kind of cool. Kind of. Not worth $20 and the paint jobs pretty much suck. Some scantily clad metal bikni visor wearing freak chick or retarded muscle atrox that makes you look like a flaming homo being your options, I'd rather go with my good old pasty white yalmaha. And while we're on the subject of yalmaha paint jobs, what's with the orange? I can see someone was definately trying for red here and came just a few hues short. Maybe you have to get NW to get red and not orange. I know Norwegians all drive crappy little econo cars but here in America a few people still have huge roadsters, which those of you in Norway can see in vaious images about the web if you need insight. Flames, lightning, and various other elemental effects are nice, as well as gold and silver chrome. What you won't see is Mr.Atroxbeefcake and Ms.TinFoilBikini anywhere. RED makes things go faster. Orange just gives you your daily dose of vitamin C and prevents you from getting scurvy.
On the other hand, the new cars are totally awesome. I'd pay $20 in a second for them, if they weren't cars. I still take the time to pause in flight when I see them racing along below at speeds that would be breakneck for slugs if slugs had necks, just to laugh at them and comment on their slowness using the shout command before buzzing them and blasting off.
3. Voices. When I heard about these, I like many other said "Wh04! 133+!" but being a frugal gamer that I am (read: stingy b*tch) I checked them out online first. Some are okay, especially as far as most of the solitus go. There's so few options of what to actually do with these voices however that they're near pointless. Oh sure, it's great fun to flood the guild chat with stupid things like "I need a medic!" when you're by yourself in the middle of one of those zones that no one goes into ever. However, the humor is quickly lost when someone asks you a question like, "hey, what's up?" and your reply is, "Affirmative!" or, "I need backup!"
Such stupid responses to such normal questions usually get a special "/ignore %t" as my response, which I'm sure makes even less sense to them. Anyone who takes the time to type the command for these voices in battle is dead before they utter a syllable. On top of this the atrox sounds like someone's inbred hick/retarded relative that lives somewhere in some trailer park in Oklahoma. In short, another good and innocent idea led hopelessly astray by one of those scruffy AO designer's bad influences.
4. Getting the game I already own. I'm not sure on this one, but last I checked NW is packaged with a copy of Anarchy Online. Whoever thought, "Hey, maybe more people who already own this game will buy the expansion if they can get another copy of the game," was a true genius. A true genius in the same sense that a sock full of rocks is. Perhaps if this genius had been beaten about the face and neck a few more times with said sock full of rocks, he might've come up with something better to entice me into buying NW. Granted those just now buying into this great game save a few bucks. I pity them.
Am I bitter about NW? HELL NO! I love it! I love the XP side bonus especially, after FunCom just got done nerfing liberally anyone who leveled too fast just a few months ago. Now it looks like their attention is back on something pointlessly stupid like PvP where it should be, and I'm once again free to mindlessly level to my heart's content. Thank you FC!
(Sidenote: I think the acronym for PvP should be PnCnW; or Point and Click and Wait, since that's all it is. No one will go along with it though, something about using the word 'and' twice just throws the whole planet of Rubi-ka out of whack I guess.)
I love the short bus thing. I actually thought about buying NW until I joined in a base raid. The gross lag was an instant mind changer. The only way I'll ever type in a NW key is if I happen to find the disk crammed in the package on a PC game magazine I buy AND if that happens before SWG releases. Because once SWG releases I like so so many others will be clicking the cancel button and never giving this game another thought.
