then it was the best place to keep the armband-wearing hall monitors on the right side of a locked door.
and then NN came into being and that was really cool for about three hours until the people who thought there weren't enough DIRECTIONS in AB found it, but they're both so year 19 anyway, so nobody worth speaking of ever goes either place anymore.
I have been to both in the past few months, usually at the request of somebody in Global who used a key and found there was nobody else there. The big groups are no more. When there are just a few folks there, there is enough rock to keep everybody happy. The main interaction, aside from RKing, is people who found a rock calling out where it is, e.g. "Top left." It is very pleasant and pretty. Of course, one of the home streets with a ton of sparkly is just as good a way to get a ton of sparkly, since for a solo miner the first rocks respawn by the time you reach the last one.
We're no strangers to mines
I know the rules for making us rich
Won't hit that rock 'til we form up in lines
You wouldn't get this from any other glitch
Neva Neva. I tried AB a couple times, and it wasn't for me. I found there were more courteous miners in NN that waited for others before starting to mine, so that everybody got a chance at the rock. It only has three fewer rocks than AB, and has a much nicer atmosphere to me.
Strangely, both change quite a bit every few months as people decide they want to do other things in game or stop playing all together. I've loved (and hated) both AB and NN, and at different times, I preferred one over the other. So, the answer, like for most things, is it depends.
Neva Neva. The one time I went to AB I was yelled at, called stupid and other hateful things. True, I was witness to a few ugly interactions in NN, but I found that most of the glitches there were kind and helpful.
I always preferred AB. I never got the cliquey vibe or bossiness there, i found most people really nice and the conversations were fun. Also the layout is more conducive to group mining.
The one time I went to Neva Neva the few people in there tried to tell me how to mine, politely, but still I was annoyed by it.
When I first entered Neva Neva I didn't jump very well so one of the regulars had me follow her until I got more familiar with the place. As I recall there were more than a few refugees from AB in Neva Neva in those days, so I always had the impression that Neva Neva as more laid back.
Never gonna give you up, never going let you down...