It's been said once, but I'll say it again: Terrible.
I loved it. It was everything I'd remembered, and more. More quests, more items, more fun. I loved that you could be anything you wanted, any combination of professions that existed in the game.
And then this came along.
Signing on that next day was like coming home to all your rooms in your house being rearranged. You had no say, you keep bumping your shins into the coffee table, and you can't move anything back. I really liked being able to move around with my mouse, but you can't do that any longer. You need the use of both hands to do anything. Want to eat a sandwich while you play? Sorry. Have a handicap that prevents you from using both hands? Oh, well.
I was a chef for my entire tenure in SWG. The chef system had some improving to do when I first played, but when I came back in the recent months, it was so great. There were many, many options for food choice. Instead of buffing just your HAM stats, you could get additions to things like masking your scent to hide you from aggro creatures or even food that cured your poison.
Now, they're back to buffing only those basic HAM stats, as far as I can tell. The months I spent gathering good resources to be able to craft a variety of foods was a waste of time, since people are only going to use three or four of the uber one. What is the point of having 50+ types of food in that case? Not only that, but food doesn't stack, so even if they put a "mask scent" food into the game, most people would choose "boost stat x +50" in case they accidentally got into a fight.
From a new player perspective, I think this game will get very boring very quickly. There are 9 cookie-cutter career paths to choose from. Once you choose one, you're locked in. You have to delete your character (that's right--there's only ONE character per server until they make good on their promise to give everyone a second). There are veteran rewards in the game that new players will presumably be able to buy to respec, and all vets have 11 respecs now, but it still doesn't matter. You, the new player, will either have to spend an excessive amount of in-game money to get your hands on one, only to be nerfed back to Combat Level 1, or you'll have to delete your character, and all your items, to ... be nerfed back to Combat Level 1.
Release SWG had its bugs and defects, but it was far from terrible. I thought the CU did indeed improve the game. But this NGE is much, much worse than release SWG. I'd take pre-release ghosting-until-server-reset over this thing any day.
The unfortunate thing is that what LA has done to its loyal veterans is completely contrary to the concept of Star Wars in the first place. This was a home to many, many people, a place that was comfortable. They've taken our home, ripped it out from under us, laughed at us, and given us back a game that was poorly slapped together and not well-thought-out.
Good luck with getting the 12-18 year old XBox demographic to play your shoddy product, George, cause this thinking 24 year old woman is going to bring her money elsewhere. Did you think that perhaps mommy wouldn't pay for 2-4 accounts for those kids, like some of your loyal vet customers are doing right now? With me and the other 6 players in my guild that are quitting, that's 16 accounts that you've lost. Ironic, eh?