I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.
Then:
Each player was given the option of creating a unique individual to enter and live in the Star Wars universe. You chose a race, and then designed their look, and then were sent into the galaxy to make your way, whatever you chose that to be.
There were no "classes" to choose from like other MMO's; instead your character was formed based on what YOU did in the world. If you fought with swords you gained experience in fencing, if you healed people you gained experience in medic skills, etc. This opened up perhaps the most unique system of class creation ever conceived.
Each planet was dutifully represented, giving players an enormous range of places to go, explore, quest etc.
This game also had one of the only fully integrated crafting systems ever made, that is to say, 99% of all items used in the game were player made: the weapons, the armor, the cloths, the houses, the furniture, everything. You could spend your entire time in the game gathering resources and crafting, if you so chose. Crafting, in other words, was not something you just did "on the side".
Players were able to swear allegiance to either The Empire or The Rebellion, and receive appropriate rewards based on their loyalty and work done for these factions.
Players were also able to place houses, and form cities that could grow, thrive, and even become an integral part of the planet they were part of; becoming an actual place on the planet map, being fully integrated into the transit system, etc.
You could, if you worked hard enough (and that's an enormous understatement, believe you me) become a jedi through a series of long and grueling tasks, and they definitely were powerful as they should be.
Now:
About the time that World of Warcraft hit the scene, two things caused the developers to feel that a major change was needed in the game.
1. World of Warcraft was becoming wildly popular, and had started to take some of their business.
2. A large contingent of players felt that becoming a Jedi was far too hard.
So... they released the ill--fated "Combat Upgrade" patch. At first, they tried to make the already present skills determine a player's "combat level" or "CL", which was basically just like a levelling system in any other game. However, they soon realized this wouldn't work at all, and after a while the NGU or "New Game Update" was released, completely sealing their fate in crap-dom.
Basically these two patches WoW-ized the game, turning what was once a devastatingly innovative class system into a set class system of the most boring and tired nature. Now, players level just like any other MMO, and experience a small and mostly unsatisfying series of end-game "dungeons", from which they receive tokens and other things needed to buy lvl 90 loot. Sound familiar? Yeah....
A short while before the CU was released, they added space combat, which did add a very cool side to the game, as you got to experience all the ships from the movies, and then some. You could also craft the ships, and they eventually added POB's, or multiplayer ships, in which you could fit several of your friends. Some of these were absolutely enormous.
However, their failure to stay true to their original design has cost them the VAST majority of their player population, which has steadily dwindled over the past few years. Recently they have completely deleted 12 servers, spelling, in my opinion, the eventual end of the game altogether.