OMG, I used to love this game. I spent hundreds of hours playing. It was awesome! I could play however I wanted. I started as an Entertainer, making it to Master Dancer/Master Musician. Then there was the ability to change classes…whenever I wanted. So I moved to Master Doctor/Master Pistoleer. Holy crap, that rocked!
THEN, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) decided that the game wasn’t fun…not sure how they decided that, but they did. So, they introduced the “Combat Upgrade” which was quickly followed by the “New Game Experience”, later called “New Game Enhancements” aka NGE. That’s when they broke the game. They removed professions, they introduced a numbered leveling system and they forced you to group…on just about everything. OK, OK, grouping is fun. BUT, if there is nearly NO WAY to go out and solo, it’s very frustrating. There were times when I just wanted to go complete some missions on my own and I didn’t always feel like wasting an hour standing around yelling to form a pick up group (which almost always resulted in having some idiotic douche ruin it). The changes were so bad that TONS of subscribers left…immediately. I stuck it out, I had hoped it would get better, it didn’t. After a few more months of trudging through the game, I finally let it go. It was tough. I had tried a few other games of the MMORPG variety, but didn’t find anything I liked much. I’m currently playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and it’s really cool. I have fun and I’m able to solo or group and pretty much play however I want. But, you know what? If SWG were ever changed back to the original version of the game, I’d go back in a second. I miss it.
Call of the Day summed it up very well:
"StarWars Galaxies was groundbreaking when it was released - it didn’t continue to flood the monotony that was the “run here. Kill/collect/deliver this. Run back. Repeat.” MMO market. It instead allowed you to do whatever the hell you wanted - some folks would never ever be caught in open combat. They’d simply stick to setting up resource refineries, selling on raw materials, building weapons, building houses, training creatures, joining bands - everything. And of course, if you wanted it your way, you could run around shooting everything in sight. And it was perfect. There was no set level system - everything experience related was down to how you played. You could be a master rifleman within a month, and stick with that if you were happy. And for those wanting a true grind - there was the Jedi quest. People have spent over a year on this grind, to finally be rewarded with an all-powerful character slot - the basic idea being that they can literally change the whole course of the game if they worked this hard.
And then SOE decided this system wasn’t working. Let’s make it “more iconic” they said. People like World of Warcraft. Let’s give them that. And so it started. Most of the non-grind classes were just removed from the game. The set levelling system (ala level one to seventy) took over. The results were so catastrophically bad that SOE have infact released a public apology for ruining an otherwise good game, and offered refunds to many players. Starwars Galaxies has now gone from one of the most populated games online to one that is slowly making its way towards retirement."
