No flash, No substance, inaccessible to new users.
I was looking for a new MMORPG to play. I've played almost all the games that have made best of list and have free trials. I came to this game with an open mind with no idea what to expect. I downloaded the trial, which is 4.5 GB. If the game is this big is must be good right? I have no idea why the game is this large, I can only theorize that efficient coding was not a priority. Upon further examination of the SWG directory, all the files are giant *.tre files based on the patch number. As you can imagine it takes a long time to download this beast of a program.
Login Procedure: First the pre-loader has to load which takes 16 seconds, then you have to accept the license agreement every time, then you log in, and even if you have it set to autoplay it has to load some more, then you have to sit through several splash screens, and after 45 more seconds you finally get to character selection, then you get a loading screen which takes 26 seconds before you get into the game. I know other games can manage to get you through all this startup in 25% of the time, something which would make me a happier consumer.
The first thing that struck me were the poor graphics. The characters look artificial and waxy and move so unnaturally that it breaks suspension of disbelief. There is a poor tutorial that cannot be skipped in which all players regardless of profession are in a medical bay in an imperial base and are rescued by Han Solo on the Millenium Falcon which seems a bit surreal. It just strains belief that every lvl 1 character is rescued by Han Solo, how does he have time to do anything else?
The next thing that struck me was the cumbersome nature of the interface. This game has the most inconvenient UI I could ever conceive of in a game. I immediately went to the options menu but none of the options I was looking to change were there and the tooltips were lacking. If you are running in windowed mode you have to use the open windows key every time you want to move the mouse cursor beyond the boundries of the game window. The sound was grating enough that it was disabled withing the first hour. Your inventory consists of a bunch of spinning crude 3d models of items that often have graphical glitches and there is no paper doll with slot for items that are equiped, instead equipped items are highlighted in this confused field of objects. Interacting with shops in the game is also needlessly cumbersome and involves an excessive number of clicks. After completing the tutorial I found I was still struggling with the interface so I decided to go to the website to check out the manual because when all else fails, RTFM right? (BTW, there is a short manual that is somewhat out of date in the program directory with the handy name of SWGExpPACK_MG_UK_v4) The Sony website does not make it easy to find the manual. The first thing you see every time you visit is a flash movie which you have to skip before any menu options come up. The website is designed in 800x600 for accessibily but I hear its possible to make modern websites that detect the resolution of a user's monitor and display appropriately. Guides are all lumped together in no particular order and each displays in a pinched 4.5" wide column.
The game, if you are one of the few brave and determined people who can actual manage to get past all of the above to get to the game, has its own set of problems. The economy of the game has been severely damaged by years of exploits and glitches, its hard to find people to talk to and team with. Noobs are generally unwelcome but there were a few helpful people. I went to the location of a quest and it wasn't actually there even though there was a giant beacon reaching miles into the sky indication that it was supposed to be there. I logged out in Mos Eisley spaceport and the next day I log in and I'm in Mos Talke instead which is where I had been hours of gameplay earlier. For several days when I first started playing there was a glitch that caused your character lvl to be reset while you were playing. Glitches of this magnitute coupled with the other problems were enough to sap the last of my desire to try this game any more. I sent in a request for in-game assistance but 5 day later my petition is still open and unanswered.
I did several space missions for the purpose of completeness and there were tons of things in that area of the game I would have done differently. XWing vs Tie Fighter came out in 1997 and it was a better space flight experience graphically and content-wise than SWG is 10 years later.
PS: If you delete the foreign language license agreements and pdfs from your game directory the client redownloads them all and puts them back which wastes 36 MB of space for no useful purpose.
Testing was done on an Alienware Super Gaming Computer, Area 51 7500 with Core 2 Duo 2.13 ghz with a GeForce 7950 GX2 1 GB graphics card