I'll address only the second part. The work has been started approximately a year ago, quickly after the concept of the faction was more or less became stable with ideas being put into it. During that time many things were re-written, many were added by analyzing the feedback gathered and ideas the community members were posting over that period of time. There was a lot of research done into the stories that Discovery had already about that time, many things were taken into the account. Like I said already, it's not an easy task and there were many involved, not keepers and wilde members but actually players completely outside, for co-writing, reviewing and so on. And there were many interesting questions presented, wasn't easy but it's interesting to go through that process as you get to make the views more solid, sharpening them, forming into something that can be described to a certain level of accuracy to the very point of asking oneself "What are the Nomads" and having a comprehensible answer to that question.
But let's rewind back the history. Initially the Nomads were a huge gap, a blackhole in terms of the roleplay. There was very little to no information on them. The single player hasn't left us much with but many questions unanswered. Without official Freelancer sequel coming anywhere near in the foreseeable future there isn't much left than to build it from the leftovers, including those that were carefully collected over time from original game developers. The fact that there wasn't enough information you can see quite clearly from the various Freelancer mods out there that are based on Freelancer's story but having completely different views on the presentation of the Nomads, ranging from borg-like hive beings to many other ideas. I've seen those too, talked to some of the creators of those interpretations, listened to their views and theories, all in all it was interesting and we were able to gather more ideas that had eventually influenced our work. However this gap was never filled here. Needless to say that Discovery until nearly August-September '07 had pretty much nothing to offer as regards the Nomads. As such the interpretation of them varied much from person to person in the stories and views were severely contradicting each other. I'm not even talking about the stories that would be told from Nomad's perspective. You can dig archives trying to find any. Same name but totally different species described there. This still continues even nowadays, but the amount of conflicting keypoints have been dramatically lowered, certainly a positive sign there, slowly a consistency is coming to this aspect of the mod after all those years of uncertainty. From chaos more or less specific terms, new terminology and so forth. Not only that but also new ways experess oneself in boundaries of Discovery roleplaying. However back then, a year ago, as it's not that hard to guess, it was making hardly possible to play the Nomads due to all that conflicting information and ideas people had. Not only that but also risky - you could have been easily got sanctioned, in fact absolute majority were. Therefore a certain order had to be imposed onto this chaotic mess, starting with the work that has been done during that time. And like I said above some ideas eventually made as far as majority begining being quite familiar to them, exactly displaying that consistency can be brought into the area previously being nearly empty bar scarce points. The growing interest in this initially nearly forgotten part of the game. I don't think I need to explain that the roleplay requires a degree of consistency to make it work in multiplayer environment, building the roleplay basis and fundamentals is essential, it's like making a language, a communication protocol, a sequences of signals, call themwhatever you like, but that's making a common ground upon which there can be done stories, events and so on. Otherwise the community becomes like the builders of Babel - ending up speaking different languages and not understanding each other, thus no work together, no intellectual interaction and no roleplay either. This is no different to other factions here, be they Order, Corsairs, Outcasts, Liberty navy officers or any others. The only difference to others is that they are explained in detail already, the Nomads are still in the process of shaping the story, the lore and all the aspects related to. It's about putting things together, not separating them, not fragmenting them into incompatible pieces even further back, pushing into the stone age of nomad roleplay at Discovery. There is no way back, only way forward.
Try to understand all those factors that were there, I've only briefly explained them just so that you can see the complexity and importance, nothing came out of nothing. This isn't like the era of browerser wars of nineties.
