As a long term player, I know what this is all about. I'm sad to say that it lacks the magic that was Star Wars Galaxies
The truth about this new game experience is that they once already 'nerfed' us with a Combat Upgrade last year, adding cartoonish animations and LOADS of graphical spam into the game, thus adding visual lag and decreasing damage for a lot of classes. Less damage, less fun was what most people believed when it hit us, and I have to agree.
How I felt that morning when I read the news from Julio (Lucas Arts President) is undescribable, it felt like a giant slap across my face and to spread the news to my guild was one of the hardest things I could ever do. It felt like a very close friend had survived a life threatning dissease and then died as he recovered.
The thing about the new system is that you can now be, what used to be, the most powerful player profession already at start, Jedi. It was the ultimate position for some players, other players just thought that it was the worst thing that could happen to the game.
Star Wars Galaxies had it's uniqueness with 32 different professions, 33 if we counted Jedi. Everyone of us were unique, a complete unique look of your character, a wide variety of clothing / armor that you can equip, Image Designers to help you change your appearance after you got bored of your looks, and guns, loads and loads of different guns.
They now 'nerfed' us so hard, that they brought us all the way down to 9, nine, (nine!) different starter professions, and Jedi was one of them.
The professions are not the only problem with this 'new game enhancement', it's also the new confusing control system, in which they took an RPG, and made it impossible for 'standard rpg players' to adapt to.
They amped up the speed of the game to twice the normal speed, made the NPCs (non-player classes) run all over the place like a human player would in PVP. Now normally, i wouldn't have anything against that, but now you actually have to aim yourself and pull the trigger. This game was not made to be that way, but yes, it's unique for an RPG to even have that type of content. I'm sad to say that it's only gonna bring down the score.
Problem with this game is that it updates extremely slow, if you want a game with content, I'd advise you to look at another title. When their release notes contain: "OVER 130 NEW QUESTS!" it's just sad. An MMORPG should contain at least 10 times of that.
Now I'm not complete ranting about this 'new game enhancement' as of yet, I still have not told you the naked truth why most of us long time players felt cheated. What it is? Trials of Obi-Wan.
Trials of Obi-Wan was released one week before they even let us know about the NGE (new game enhancement), before that, a lot of players did not know they had secretely been developing this game over 6 months from that date and were going to release it the following month. A lot of us felt extremely cheated, because when it hit the fan, everyone knew that they had taken your money to insure themselves not going bankrupt when they saw how many people who had left the first Combat Upgrade. They knew, that this would make thousands of people quit this game, and therefore, they made us pay for a product, that i must also add, did not include much content anyways, only to survive their own money crisis that would come after.
You now also have the ability to level up to level 90, 80 was max level before this and here comes the fun part: You can not level up without the 'Trials of Obi-Wan' expansion, if you do not want to spend months and months and even more months of grinding useless experience points.
My best advice to you, as a potential new player, is to put this back on the shelf when you see it, and go for another MMORPG. This veteran player has had enough of it and there's a big chance that this game will die in less than a year.
I will still be on my server (Scylla) and play it until the servers shut down for a final shut down. Why? Because I have friends, memories, and pictures in my head of a game that was the greatest of them all.
Good luck, and god bless SWG...
May you rest in peace...