The Game has made a definite turn for the worse. Please read my review.
My friend left a couple months later because his new family life didn't allow him to play, he got married.
I've stuck with the game. I've seen the launches of many patchs and 3 game expansions now. I was here when the first major game change the Combat Upgrade was released. I had been uneasy about that first one, but I had played it on Test Center beforehand and had eased my doubts. I'd found joy in the game again.
I had particularly of late become fond of my creature handler about 2 months before the release of the NGE. Just 2 weeks before the Trials of Obi Wan Release I had managed to unlock her, and I was having a lot of fun. I preordered Trials of Obi Wan. Something though made me keep thinking something was wrong. I asked questions, I even asked questions about the coming release in several threads, one of which was made by the current Community Relations Manager for SWG, Thunderheart, though that was not his post at the time. It was a Friday Feature. Rather than answer some very simple questions all he could do for over a page was talk about cookies. So I cancelled my preorder and I wrote SOE president Jon Smedley with why I had cancelled. Something felt wrong in my gut, and I thank God I had made the right decision. At the same time other folks had found the SWG: Starter Kit listed on Amazon.com.
They asked on the boards the developers what it was about, posting the info. We were told in no uncertain terms by the Community Relations Manager at the time, Tiggs, that it was an erroneous listing. I don't want you to think Tiggs was lying to us intentionally I fully believe that they lied to her and thus she unintentionally passed that lie to us. However as you can see it was not erroneous.
During this time leading up to the NGE they also released changes and made marketing strategies for professions they knew they were removing, the NGE was not programmed in a month. Thus they have had a consistent level of dishonesty with us the consumer.
Now on to what I think of this NGE:
Gameplay overall is terrible. They changed the keymap such that if you try to type anything on the keyboard random windows seem to pop up all over the place. If you try to close one window, all of them disappear, even ones you didn't want to close. It is very diffucult to chat compared to how it used to be, you have to hit the enter key first. This is very frustrating.
Additionally they removed all movement from the mouse. You have to move using the WASD keys. A step backwards I think in computer development. I can't imagine a modern game requiring WASD.
The next major change is that they changed double click actions to a single mouse click action. This makes it extremely difficult to bring up menus you need, but also causes you to attack things you don't mean too. It gets you dead pretty quick. There are radials you have to use with almost all interaction with NPCs, buildings etc. These radials are very difficult to bring up now, they were removed from the mouse and put on the keyboard, when you do get them to come up you often have to have your character look up to see them.
I played this on Test Center as well my fears this time were not allayed.
Previously disabled persons could play the game with little to no problems, now it causes such pain in some disabled persons to play that the game has no enjoyment for them.
Trader, one of the nine professsions, is seriously bugged in game. It is not possible to pass the 9th box in the profession currently because you can't earn the xp it requires. There is no way in the game to earn it.
Additionally when us veterans converted to it we were given three quest items that don't even work. They are suppose to have an inspect option but do not.
There is also not much content in the game, not as much as you might expect. The developers have been negligent in adding content, having added only 4 main dungeon/quest places in over 2 years, and of these 1 was removed in the NGE because of the Jedi changes.
The game is made hard to play by the fact that SOE has not provided a new online game manual, the changes are such that the manual that came with the game is worthless.
In my honest opinion your money would be spent better elsewhere. This game is riddled with a hard ui interface, with numerous bugs...many gamebreaking for their classes, and has become unfriendly to the disabled. The Developers, whether SOE or LucasArts have not kept a majority of their promises to the game players. They now are casually disgarding us veterans, and they'll do the same to you. Just don't buy this, and use the money on another game.