-changing your profession as many times as you jolly well wanted

-resources with stats, "experimenting", and a million different outcomes from the same crafting schematic

-planting your house anywhere you wanted

-taming baby critters

-having a wardrobe as large as my houses could hold

-social professions

-6k credit limit on bazaars, making player city malls possible and fun

-incapacitation rather than death

-terrain negotiation

.... more to come... add your own too

Posture mods and range mods.

Masked scent.

The virtual world it strived to create for people to live out a life in, and the community that the virtual world fosterd.

crafting

resource collecting

creating your own path

pilot/JTL

server community...it declined considerably with the CU and completely died shortly after the NGE

adding your own name to crafted items

I just miss not being pidgeonholed into a "iconic class".

My "Han Solo" build was more Han Solo than the Smuggler class... since Han was more than just a smuggler.

He was a Imperial trained officer and soldier, a pilot, a merchant, a smuggler and a darn fine shot. Bery little of this is in the "class".

For me it was being a jack of all trades with  long past.

Taming. My pets.

On my wookiee crafter, my shop.

I also loved the TEF system.

player cities

player controlled economy

shuttle ports at higher rank for city

10 MINUTE SHUTTLE WAIT AT STARPORT (I met so many people that way)

TEF flags

Overt/Covert system

surveying for resources

Jedi being rare, as they should have been

Player bounty system against jedi (no, I wasnt a bounty hunter)

Mix and match professions (pikeman, tkm ftw :D )

changing professions on a whim

Image Design

I could go on for days...

All of the above.

Mostly, I enjoyed the people that Pre-CU SWG attracted. The awesome community WAS the best part of the gameplay.

People who played Pre-CU were the most die hard SW fans (the gamer kind at least. I acknowledge there are plenty of non-gaming SW fans out there who had no idea about SWG). We were the onse who followed the games development long before the game was in public testing. We poured over every bit of the concept art, and drank up every morsel of info we could find (ie: we could read, which was hard for Nancy McIntyre to grasp).

That being said, since we were such ardent fans of SW, playing together in a SW universe was like a 24/7 SW convention but better. The darker side of the coin, is that since we all loved SW so much, we have higher standards than SOE did concerning things like continueity and canon. We did bitch about the details.

But, because we were all there, and we had the tools to enjoy the game how we wanted (thanks Raph), we WERE the X factor that made the game great, and Star Warsy and Iconic. It was nothing that SOE could understand or control save for taking away our dependence on each other.

The NGE was their attempt to take control. The problem is they did not understand what was great about the game ( 'You just sat there and it was fun?' ). They were not ardent SW fans. So when they'd make changes here and there, they did not understand the effects they were having on the game.

One of the most Star Warsy and Iconic things about the movies, is not 'Luke' or Leia' or 'Darth Vader' or any other character etc... it's their relationships and interactions that make the movies so great (and it could be argued that the same lack of character connection that made the prequels suck... wtg director George). We had that in Pre-CU, and by SOE removing them, I say they neutered the most Star Warsy and Iconic aspect of the game.

The uniqueness of being unique...

Faction scanners for player cities

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

All of the above.

Mostly, I enjoyed the people that Pre-CU SWG attracted. The awesome community WAS the best part of the gameplay.

Absolutely!

I was just thinking about the official forums from that time - very entertaining!

I loved just watching how everything and everyone worked inside this game. A new item would be added and a ripple effect would occur throughout the game as the economy and players adapted. It was amazing at times. What a perfect background to place all the content and game parts into. Imagine a game where in your downtime you had pre-cu economy and world sim to play with instead of doing nothing or logging out.

Some of my best memories are from that time.

I remember one time, on Radiant, one of my friends started weapon crafting and making pistols. The pistols had great stats and were really nice. We was busy crafting on Naboo I think it was and had me go and sell them. So I would hop the shuttle to Tatooine and sell the guns for him and then we would split the profits. I did this for like 3 hours and it was awesome.

The other was a siege on one of our bases. We fought for hours and held the thing. I remember being a combat medic and hiding inside a little room (this was when CM's diseases/poisons were majorly over-powered) and just tossing those suckers as fast as I could.

Good times.

Without a doubt SWG had the best community.  I still play with many of the folks I met on Kettemoor, and still many more that I keep in touch with. 

Oddly enough, I really liked the potential of the game.  Although it never came to fruition, just seeing the design concepts was amazing. 

It's really too bad that the bugs, and generally poor implementation, choked all sense of fun out of the game.

Using a krayt pearl carbine as a tier 4 marksman. And a weaponsmith/TK. nothing like giving your friend the gun and hitting the enemy with your fist.

 I loved being on Bloodfin. Nobody gives you a hand up in Bloodfin, and that's just the way I liked it. Drama and all. I was often an overt Imperial on the streets of Theed and Coronet on Bloodfin looking for my way to the next rebel kill. Ah, the sweet life.