the thing that first got me into NS, and thusly kept me hooked on it, would be 1.04 beta on the old KIR servers. My ping was always <25, and I had a great group of guys to play with, m0nk3ym4n, and Ayatollah before he join exi. We used to have epic battles with aya as com, me as gorge, and a horde of people who basically had no idea what NS was, and turning them into a winning team. Our average game length was two hours, and they were filled with non-stop action of aya being forced to siege out my WoLs. In those games, we didnt have any player issues, no one F4ed, no quitting in the middle, no whining because we had sat there for 2 hours and were damn proud of it, even if we lost.
then 2.0 came..... gorges were stripped of all the prestige they used to carry... the KIR server dissapeared, everything was changed, people started quitting more and whining...
3.0 hasnt changed much, people whine, quit, and the games can be decided by a few good players instead of a team.
That is why I dont play much NS any more, because its just nothing like it used to be.