When Eric Bischoff became the executive vice president of WCW, he went about changing the structure and old school attitudes to make the company function in more modern way. He started this by creating WCW Nitro. At first people believed that Eric was just another guy with radical ideas that was going to keep the company in the stone age. Then came the nWo.
With the arrival of Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and the infamous heel turn of Hulk Hogan, the nWo changed the foundation as to how wrestling on television was shown to a mass audience. In many ways it was reality TV before reality TV became popular because even though it was still fake, you honestly believed that everything was happening was real. It also allowed wrestling itself to become mainstream picking up athletes like Karl Malone, Dennis Rodman from the NBA and Bill Goldberg a retired NFL player who went on to become one of the biggest household names.
The idea had promise and generated ratings but it wasn't without its flaws. WCW was not known for allowing newer talent to be pushed to mainstream status, plus despite being cool the nWo were bad guys. The problem was they were bad guys that always won. Fans were always waiting for the day where the nWo would finally lose and even when moments came whether you had the outsiders losing the tag belts, or Hogan losing the WCW title to either Goldberg or Sting, the victories never really seemed important.
One thing however that I disagree with was the when they arrived in WWE that they were old news. The biggest issue was that they were not promoted properly. During their time in the company they were beating up crewmembers backstage on Raw and Smackdown shows, and wrestling no name talents like Spike Dudley. With proper story lines that would have helped to promote them as the top heels, it would have made for more meaningful matches against superstars like Austin and the Rock. For someone who doesn't like to make bad business decisions, Vince McMahon seemed to have no trouble, killing a group that was guaranteed to make him millions of dollars.