This is my PRE CU review which was the best mmorpg on the market, however as time went on LA/SOE kept on ruining it.....
What made this game so great was the fact that you had no levels and no classes and it was totally skill based. Also there was things like vehicles and mounts and player cities, you'd PVP in other peoples players cities aswel. It was Rebel vs Imperials and that made each fight even more important because your playing for a faction you grew up with and care about.
Also SWG had a full player economy where all materials were harvested from the ground using harvestors and sometimes by certain professions like scout who harvested the dead animals to get all the hides and stuff. The schematics to create all the goods were in a crafters skills but sometimes schematics were loot. Some rare items required special ways of crafting them liek the jetpack having to craft it in a dungeon with a group to protect you. Jedi also had to craft their lightsabers so they had abit of crafting too, not just all for crafters. You could start up your own Mall with lots of vendors from your crafted good, so it was a full player economy where no one auction house sold all your stuff you looted. Everything was crafted by th eplayers and sold by the players in their own homes. Onto Homes you could fully decorate them with allt he crafted furniture and items you've collected over the years. Like i said you can place vendors in them and even use them as hideouts or for private dueling so noone from the outside could kill you like if you were Jedi and then Bounty Hunters (player profession) would be looking for you. There was player cities aswel which were created by guilds as a sorta base for every players home and protection, also there was PVP bases to pump out NPCs and to have fun ofcorse.
The game had lots of vehicles to use for travel round the planets but there was also mounts which were tamed by Creature Handlers. What a wonderful profession to have making money by going out and taming creatures and making commands for the creature and mounting him and telling em to other players. On top of this you had the Star Ports to travel from Planet to Planet and then shuttle ports to travel from City to City.
The Entertainer class was to help out players to reduce fatigue after combat and also to heal mind but they were also for fun. They could play music and dance and image design players. Mainly girls played this profession but it was really fun to walk into a cantina where they hung out and chated and it really brought the community together.
The death penalty for the game was item decay on stuff that wasn't insure in your inventory and also wounds on your HAM bar, which doctors and Entertainers ahd to heal. This was a great death penalty because decay meant money for crafters and a items death so your items wern't floating about forever like other mmorpgs. Also it was a very social death and brought the community together.
Jedi were a new class added at the end of 2003 for plaeyrs to unlock. However they started off really hard to get and had permadeath but just ended up eing very easy to get and no permadeath, so it really unbalanced them an they got made as weak as everyother profession. This eventually led to seeing Jedi everywhere and everyone just used their jedi and no other profession but entertainers doctors and crafter. I found this very sad because it ruined the economy and ruined PVP. I would have prefered permadeath to be in and make them hard to get again so you rarely see any.
The game shipped without space which many said was stupid seeing as Star Wars is about space. however they added the JTLS expansion which added space but for me it was really crap and pointless, no death stars or star destroyers or anything Star Wars. Also it ruined the ground game by allowing you to travel from Planet to Planet really fast without the 10 min wait. You may be saying i'm crazy but i loved the community and chatting to them and dueling while waiting it was part of the fun.
So i'll end my review here and i want to say SWG was the best and most unique mmorpg that ever existed. I really wish for LA and SOE to stop being stupid and make classic servers for the game. The NGE which ruined SWG was a patch that removed everything good from the game and just made it really bad really buggy and just sooo poor to play. The CU was a patch before hand that added levels into the game and really ruined it because it stopped you from mixing crafter with a combat profession.
Please bring back pre cu SOE...