This game is only "Star Warsy" if you consider Star Wars to be for the dull-witted and unimaginative...
For the first 30 levels of the game, you will be involved in quests that feature Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2, and other familiar Star Wars characters. Star Wars fans will appreciate that the 10-level tutorial is based on the Ord Mantell station, where Han Solo had his run-in with the Bounty Hunter who changed his mind about staying with the Rebellion (as he reported to General Riekkian in Echo Base on Hoth).
The tutorial deposits you in Mos Eisley where you may begin running quests which involve Jabba the Hutt - but once you get past the first 30 levels and are into the game as it currently stands and has stood content-wise for the past two years, nothing is more Star Warsy than before. Nothing is more immersive than before.
If anything, the new control setup and game mechanics are LESS immersive than ever before. Combat used to involve knowing which specials to use in which order, balancing your tactics with the reservoirs of stat pools you would need to execute them - now, while special abilities still exist, they are much fewer than before and so much less imagination is involved.
This is mostly due to the fact that you must hold your cursor on target to engage an enemy. While this does result in the combat being more immediate and in-your-face, it also leads to it having a "bastardized-FPS" feel which just does not work in an MMO. Combat MUST be simplified because you have to hold your target, and it is only a matter of time before circle-strafing and bunny-hopping, in whatever form SWG will allow, become the determinants for victory in PvP combat.
The sophisticated profession system which made Star Wars so innovative has been removed in favor of 9 cookie-cutter professions which function almost precisely like professions in EverQuest II function - you have a very finite set of attacks and skills which are upgraded by better versions as you level up. As a Combat Level 80 Commando I had six attacks and one heal, and that was it.
Jedi fare a little better with ten special moves at Combat Level 80, but three are buffs, two are defensive, and only one is an outright "attack."
Combat is SWG has always been complex - it was about balancing skill mods with armor mods with food and buff mods versus what your opponent had, or having the right combination of skills to allow you to deal damage and heal yourself quickly, or getting just the right components to build that nice weapon which would give you the edge in combat. Now, all that is gone - at least for the foreseeable future. Given, crafters will eventually get back on the horse and begin creating new weapons, but with item decay removed from the game the market is not going to be as large as it ever was, and with the removal of the profit motive much of the impetus for hard crafting work to make the best weapons and armor is going to be gone.
All the old armor and clothing with attachments to enhance skills doesn't work anymore. Most of the old weapons are either broken or converted into pitiful status. Foods have been completely reworked and have to be learned all over again. For new players, none of these pains will be felt, but for the vast player-base, it is like learning a whole new game - for the SECOND time (the Combat Upgrade had much the same effect, only not nearly as jarring as the NGE).
This is all to speak only of mechanics, however - no new content other than the tutorial and the missions to get you to level 30 has been added. There is still no dynamic war between the Empire and the Rebellion to be fought. There are only a handful of "dungeons" and "theme parks" to explore. I fail to see how having to hold your cursor over your target makes this game suddenly feel more "Star Warsy" than every before.
SOE claims that they have new, GCW-based content on the way. We've heard this tune before, we being the loyal player base who have trusted the company to deliver the Star Wars MMO we have sought for so long; but SOE should not get the blame, however. This should be laid square at the feet of LucasArts, who have a long and established history of releasing shoddy Star Wars games because they knew they would still turn a profit, based on the strength of the license.
How many GameSpot reviews say about Star Wars games, in one form or another, "The game isn't that good...but if you are a Star Wars fan you will probably like it."
For new players to SWG, this will probably hold true. Once you have been in the game for a few months, however, new players will learn what the 2 1/2-year vets have already learned - there just isn't that much to do in Star Wars Galaxies. Read the initial review for SWG here on GameSpot - SWG has promise, but not much depth.
Seeing as how it is two-and-a-half years after release, the game has gone through two major structural changes and STILL has not seen the release of any substantial content (and that which has been released, like Rage of the Wookies and Trials of Obi-Wan, has been plagued with bugs and gated quests respectively), what are realistic odds that SOE is going to have time to both create, test, and release stable, truly immersive content for Star Wars Galaxies before the game goes under?
Maybe Han Solo could pull off a win with odds like that with a sabaac deck, but here in the real world, it's not looking so good.
Maybe if the NGE had been more polished before going live so as not to leave such a poor taste in the mouths of the established player-base it might have had a chance of renewing the life of Star Wars Galaxies, but as it stands this will go down in the history books as one last attempt to generate a new wave of subscriptions before the inevitable end with server-condensements and eventually, cancellation.
The die-hards might manage to keep a few servers going with their tenuous hold on the game and unwillingness to admit that they have spent almost three years wasting their time on a failed endeavor, but SWG has seen its hayday.
We can only hope that if LucasArts ever conceives of a SWG2, they let it stay in Beta as long as it needs before going live so that it can get off on the right foot.
SWG proves the truth of the axiom that if you have a crumbling foundation, you cannot continue to build.