This game is on its way out my friends, I'm really sad to say it but it's true. Read on...
The original Combat upgrade hurt, but left the core of the game intact and many players took the changes in stride and SOE did try to cover the various issues and bugs that cropped up. The in-game economy was diverse and player driven, content (though a bit lacking) was there if you chose to look for it or make it yourself.
Naturally there were arguments about genre, and this profession being better than that profession, jedi population (who despite slowly rising numbers were constantly on the run from Bounty Hunters, I would know :) )
was balanced among itself and the CU-combat system, once you got used to it, was quite the equalizer amoing the hardcore pvp'ers and the casual pvp'ers. But the big fact is that the CU allowed diversity among its players.
The new SWG:NGE era game has diluted the game down to where you have 9 professions and everyone is a cookie cutter template of everyone else. While certainly content was added, and people were grateful for it, the shock of the combat system change (yet again) was the breaking point for a great number of players.
There is confusion among the player community as to where exactly SOE is taking StarWars Galaxies, and a general consensus that for every one issue they fix (many the result of a fast produced and released system change) three more problems appear.
Changing from a system where SOE boated a new, challenging, strategy-based combat system (CU1) it has become little more than a first person shooter where unless you were jedi previously, hand to hand combat is almost a thing of the past.
Many of the professions that quietly bolstered the game were either retrofitted into 4 or 5 classes or, in the case of CreatureHandler (and almost all Scout-type skills) and Bio-Engineer were completely removed from the game which in fact has caused many of the old Crafter schematics (food/drink especially) to be completely unusable. Worse still is the refusal to have removed the afflicted crafting recipes in the process.
The controversial Trials of Obi-Wan expansion which while at first looked promising and was touted as being very jedi oriented (which many hoped would lure power-gaming Jedi players elsewhere) offered such bonuses as a necklace for the Creature Handler profession (now useless) to boost its abilities, a unique crystal for jedi lightsabers (which has brought on a list of game glitches all its own) and in my opinion was the only expansion specifically prepared for the NGE because those who bought it wound up with ample time to exploit the new quest system for Combat-Level grinding.
Coupled with the release of the expansion was of course..NGE itself, causing a _very_ large percentage of SWG players to cancel their accounts, due to the feelings of betrayal since to much of the community, there had only been a faint rumour of an impending change in the game's combat system.
All in all, I would suggest buying a stand-alone pc or console game based on star wars and save yourself the money on monthly subscriptions.
If you've read John Smeddly's interview, he brags about what is..in essence coming apart at the seams. They hope to recupe their _massive_ losses in player accounts, by going cross-platform and built the NGE based on console-only support. His comment about people want to smoke a cigarette with one hand and play with the other might be his style of play, but as a smoker..im more than happy to put down my pack and play the game with both hands.
Frankly, his comment makes me wonder why he's thinking of smoking analogies in the first place.
To those who dont smoke but play this game: you'll have a free hand to channel surf on the television, or maybe watch your favorite parts of Star Wars and hope a game will come out thats worth playing in again.
SiliconBandit
-Victime of the NGE