I used to love this game...
I remember playing SWG back in beta... I remember the joy of running around on Tatooine and being owned by mountain squills, and not to mention discovering floating bushes. Then I remember playing along with my older brother after release, damn, those were good times. I remember the joy we had making a super battle droid follow us on our speeders until we reached the outpost on endor, which gauranteed the death of all passer-by. I remember the joy I had with my annoying genosian sonic blaster and sweet hand to hand moves, and I remember the joy my brother had with his one hit kill flamethrower and his friendly little pet.
But that... That's all gone now...
Alright, with my little paragraph seen above, it's easy to see that this game used to be fun... Alot of fun... I mean, a Star Wars MMORPG? That's great! I had more fun with it than I've had with WoW, going to planets like Endor to fight insanley powerful mandalorian-armor-clad pirates, going to dantooine to make mad cash, building a house on top of a flat-topped mountain on Naboo, and going to familiar places from the movies and from the expanded star wars universe. Really, it had its issues, but it was a great game.
Now? Holy crap... Let's just say I kinda began to fall apart after the introduction of the Jedi class... You see... Back then, the Jedi Class was a bit more reasonable, because you actually had to work for it... Work a LONG time too, as you had to master different proffesions until you got the ones nescessary to become a Jedi... But then, people started complaining about Jedi being too powerful, while the Jedi players themselves complained about not being powerful enough... There was a big forum uproar because Jedi could only die so many times, and non-Jedi with the right stuff could kill one no problem... Take me, for example... One self destructing droid on a totally unsespecting Jedi bounty = dead Jedi. So yeah, they really should have worked more on the Jedi class before making it live, and this kinda set off a chain reaction that ended up in the destruction of this game.
Not only were in game prices increasing (at least, on my server), But you saw more and more Jedi, and the Dev's goal was to have very few, around 100 Jedi per server. This was completley off, as people would grind like hell just to get Jedi. Then came the combat upgrade... Oh wow...
Not only did this kinda ruin the clean, simple interface, but it made some of your weapons and armor you used before the CU simply un-usable... You can tell they TRIED to polish the combat system with the introduction of some finer things like DPS, but that didn't work... And for some reason, Sony decided to add something even worse... The NGE.
Okay, The NGE officially ruined the game... Theres now 9 proffesions, one of them Jedi, which makes about 99% of the people you see Jedi... That, and the new level system COMPLETLEY screwed up the playing value... With the class system, you would still have alot of stuff to do even once you mastered everything, and it wasn't particulary hard to give up one class for another if you got bored. But now, around level 30, you are left with essentially nothing to do, and still have a pretty big gap to close with the cap at level 90... 35 proffesions replaced with 9... Bad... Very, very bad... And I haven't even mentioned the combat... Wow, talk about broken. It's changed from the third person to some crazy over the shoulder/first person thing, that just dosen't work...It might seem like an interesting approach on paper, but if you play it, you'll learn that it sucks.
So yes... This isn't even the same game any more, per se. I have very, very fond memories of playing this game, and it's a shame to see those all go up in flames when I see the abomination this game has become.