You are 11.4583% inaccurate!  See i can make up statistics too.

I hope you and the other 5 people playing the new version are having fun though, the 300,000 of us that were playing before they messed it up must be wrong.

As someone who played this game when it came out I will explain why it was so fun until SOE decided to start messing with things.

In the begining there were skills and no levels.  That meant you could do anything at all that was relevant to your skill and you would increase it. Combat skills for example:  Want to kill hundreds of womprats? Ok.  Want to do tons of missions? Ok.  Want to explore each world and only fight a few critters when you encounter them? Ok.  You could pace yourself how ever you wanted and have fun doing it.  It had a much different feel than leveling and if you didnt play it before the switch to "levels" you wont understand it regardless of how much you try.  I was one of the first Bounty Hunters on Bria but I realized I wanted to do something other than fight.

Next up was crafting.  Slow and tedious at first, but in time it became a lifestyle in game.  I made a weaponsmith and set up on Naboo.  I started off small, using a house and a cheap looking vendor to sell some basic weapons.  Sales were good since everyone was just starting out.  I spent my time hunting for resources and scraping a living from my shop and selling goods in town.  After a while I got some mining rigs and was able to make some great weapons. In the end I was using a Guild Hall as my shop, fully furnished, rooms full of various outfits and armor for my personal use.  I have vendors for pistols, carbine, rifles, and melee weapons.  I even had a front desk I made out of various pieces of furniture to give my place an authentic look.  I had chairs for people to sit in and I sold components and basic crafting goods at my front desk.  I went from nothing to about 2 million creds in 18 days.  I had a blast.

Lastly, and this is what was the best part of the game, was the scale.  Having to run from my shop into town to get on a ship and fly to another planet to make a sale with someone was fun.  Waiting at the starport and having conversations with people ive never met while we wait was fun.  Visiting other shops and checking out their prices so I could undercut them was fun.  I had regular customers, people knew me by name, and I even took custom orders for very specific types of weapons.  I spent a few hours running out to the middle of nowhere, on foot long before any vehicles, just so I could set up a small house on my other account and put some weapons for sale on it at rediculously low prices.  I figured if anyone ever found it they deserved some cheap weapons, I sold 5 weapons in 2 weeks, but it was great to know people were out there, exploring.  I set up deals with Rebels for "exclusive" weapons that I in turn sold to Imperials under the same "exclusive" title.  I had a smuggler who worked for me as my personal slicer and I gave him a cut of my profits in exchange for slicing all my customers weapons for free.

In the end it wasnt about getting places quickly it was about the journey.  People were always in town talking and hanging around because it took forever to get anywhere so you pretty much had to wait at some point so you might as well chat.  The game had one of the best social communities at launch.  It was immersive, accomplishments meant something, exploring was fun.  Hanging out in the cantina doing absolutely nothing was fun because you knew you would see some cool looking avatars walk in, or overhear some people RPing, or watch a group of dancers and musicians put on a show.  There was no rush, the game was open ended, and you never knew what someone was capable of because there were no levels or tags to tip you off.  I remember having on my black trenchcoat, pants, shirt, shoes, gloves, and my CE goggles sitting outside of Mos Eisley with my FWG5 at my hip fully sliced and tweaked.  People would come up, ask if I was a Bounty Hunter, and I would just smile.  I would challenge them and once they kicked my ass we would have a good laugh and I would point them to my shop so they could get the gun I was using.

When I read these forums and see people mention how easy it is to travel, how they dont need other people to help with anything, and how the capital cities are dead it makes me sad.  Ever since I left I always wanted to go back, but I was busy doing other things with friends and couldnt find the time.  Without a community and the need to interact these online games are just Single Player Games you are paying a monthly fee for.

Who else remembers release? When Eyeshot was great, Knockdown was so overpowered, and Commandos were so broken it brought tears to your eyes from laughter...

Terrans = Imperial Space Marines

Protoss = Eldar

Zerg = Tyranids

Starcraft was originally worked up as a demo game for Games Workshop by Blizzard to get the rights to the WH:40k IP.  After GW turned them down on both Warcraft (Warhammer Fantasy IP) and Starcraft they finished up Warcraft and put Starcraft on a back burner for a couple years.  They went back to it later, changed the unit models, and created their own backstory.

Blizzard borrowed alot from Games Workshop and there are many similarities.  But the bottom line is Starcraft is one of the greatest RTS games of all time so worrying about who copied who or lack of time to build as much backstory is moot.  It will be a great RTS game tons of people will be playing and mastering for years to come.  Thats the bottom line.

Expect a Diablo game similar to Guild Wars in the future and eventually a Starcraft MMOFPS either a few years after SC2 or just after SC3 if they feel they need more time to develop some history and wait for WoW to decline.