I dont even dare to leave my houses let alone
go anywhere to survey or place miners ..

its not that i hate swg .. i smply cant play
it like i want to ..

What it was before the Combat Upgrade: A solofest. A decent finished combat template was able to do at least 80% of the PvE "content" solo. Good for the ego, but poor from a community standpoint. PvP was highly dependant on having the "right" template with uber items. And a crafter who was dedicated enough to hunt down the right stuff could easily make uber items, so it came down to everyone basically going with the same basic template (which was usually a melee profession, depending on the flavor of the month). Content was nonexistant. Three real "dungeons" (two were easily soloable, the other was known to kill 40 people before they reached the second room), nine different yet exactly the same "space adventures" (which could be exploited so not every aggressive mob would attack on sight), the JTL expansion (got old after about a month), a weak planetary control concept (rebels GREATLY outnumber Imperials), and the jedi path was what passed for content. Lots of implied content, though. Jedi were EVERYWHERE. Not necessarily a bad thing (people complain about jedi in a time where non exist, yet don't bat an eye when rebels control all the core planets when they should not be so prominent) since it was part of the limited content and some of the other content put you on the jedi path regardless of where you were going to follow it or not. And the game shipped WELL before it was ready. The game was basically stable, but lots of things were shipped broken. Took a few months after the release for anything to be fixed.

Ultimately, the game was an MMO that was based on Star Wars instead of being a game that took place in the Star Wars universe.

Post Combat Upgrade: "You will group or you will never be able to do anything meaningful, combat related, ever again." They completely changed ALL the non-crafting classes. From what I've seen, this was something they got right. If you didn't like your old class, you could respec your class, and assuming you had enough "points," change to something else and try that. Again, another good move on their part. A drawback is that not everything is working as intended. Most people put the new Root/Paralyze skills as greatly unbalanced. And everyone who didn't like their class respec'd as a Bounty Hunter (more on that below). PvE is now largely unsoloable (if you're attacking things on or close to your level). Remember those three dungoens above? Well, now they're all doable as a group. Easily doable. From what I'm told, the one that killed scores of people five minutes into the dungeon is now a complete walk in the park. It hit a point where now the dungeon is filled with people because it's now that easy and that great of xp. So it's now actually worth grouping, and you get decent xp for it. Either from random missions or the dungeons. Lots of crafters got screwed since they basically replaced the core gameplay system. Armorsmiths got it the worst since they changed resourece requirements. The excellent resources before are now trash. With all the new options, everyone else just needs to adjust for the new SWG. From what I've read on the forums, they're just now (a week after the first few live servers were infected with the CU) pushing the "high end"planets to be tested on the Test server. All throughout the CU beta, they only told players to focus on the core worlds (which had overall easier critters).

Which brings me to jedi. Short and quick (running late for work), Jedi can't use their lightsabers/powers near any PC or humanoid NPC or they'll gain visibility. Gain too much, and PC Bounty Hunters come after them. If a BH kills a jedi, the jedi loses from 50k to 500k of xp. That's a lot to lose now since it's so hard to get back. And five BH can attack on jedi, but no one can help the jedi defend themself. A competent group of BH can make sure the jedi can't get a shot in at all. AND the BH doesn't even have to master the BH tree to hunt jedi. Jedi weren't properly tested during the combat upgrade beta, so their best lightsaber can't even compare to the mid level of most elite combat classes. Anytime they attack, their force gets drained. Can't kill one mob solo without being completely drained and doing the joyous 5-10 minute sit and wait. Can't get through one grouped mission lair without completely draining yourself. Not so bad, but you become useless unless you do damage, and jedi can't do damage without using force. So jedi have been hit hard.

Ultimately, the game has become Everquest with Wookiees but without the content.

Not exactly the best description I can give, but I rushed it since I'm now 15 minutes late for work. I skipped a lot of problems, but what it comes down to is the game is STILL in a beta phase. If they just held off on putting the Combat Upgrade live for even a month, they could have fine tuned so much. But they're releasing a new expansion soon. And that new content (a rare thing in this game) relies heavily on the Combat Upgrade. And they NEED to get it out soon because it's a rather half assed plug for the new Star Wars movie (they call the expansion Star Wars Galaxies Episode III: Rage of the Wookies), complete with a bunch of things straight from the movie. Maybe once the summer is over the game will be back to "working" order. I'm not sure I'll be there since I worked my *** off to get a jedi and don't have the time/desire to grind out a template, from scratch, with these new rules in place

From someone who considered trying Star Wars Galaxies... It now seems too late to see what it was really like. Now I'm hearing they've changed it so it's exactly like WoW and EQ.

Could someone explain the difference between what it used to be and what it is now?