And last but not least I was wondering if you could say if there will be anything new and cool for 1.00 I've scoured the forums for any info but to no avail

We haven't at least planned a big surprise there - new and cool tends to mean bugs and crashes so it would make a risk I'd want to avoid. After all, RWR 1.0 is still a big surprise in itself to many new players, I hope.

Some new soundtracks may still make it into the game, some new dialogue content, UI tweaks, the first shared profile servers should be there in the next version, ah, we've got a new font in the next version too, that's pretty cool In a few weeks' time we should be in a position that game client side changes will become minimal, and we'll mostly work to improve the online PvP stuff before hitting 1.0.