I got no slap, Bab, all I see is Bustr building up his strawman.
The reality of things are that NOE over land is difficult for anyone now. However, it's not impossible. If people fail to take the time to plan their route, not only will they fail, but they deserve to.
It's not something you need years to learn. It literally requires knowing how to read the maps, and the radar altitudes. That takes minutes. Add a few weeks to be able to keep your plane steady, and you can fly NOE to most places, even if not everywhere.
The only valid point Bustr has its that it's now impractical to fly HORDES noe, which is inarguably a good thing. I don't know if Bustr truly believes the image he is portraying, or if he is bending history for his own purpose. Either way, he is wrong on the hordes; it was a crappy time for 66% of the players, those being on the receiving end of the country that happened to be hording at the moment.
And besides that, his notion that hordes are necessary for noobs to have fun is patently untrue. Yesterday, I ran a string of missions, and we rolled 6 bases. All of them had noobs (that I helped to be useful), and ended up drawing most of the rooks. Any noobs could have jumped in, and been part of organized action, had fun, and learn something.