I havent played this game b4 but i see a lot of flaming what was pre-cu like what made the game so horrible?

**dont give they screwed it up and i hate it posts, i want facts why and what the cause was**

I think, at its core, many players never forgave SOE for the terrible way they implemented the NGE. They mislead the (at the time) players while trying to use the money these people had payed monthly to revamp the game for a different player base.

It failed horribly. Sub numbers dropped. 32 professions with no levels were destroyed...

Bye to the rangers and tka of the world. Bye to the creature handler.

Some were upset they lost their "alpha" jedi --- but most were (and still are) upset that the game they had played was changed to an almost unrecognizable form in an attempt to be more like WOW.

Now I am one of those who plays the current game, but it is easy to understand why so many will harbor so much anger towards those who were at the helm of SOE for the manner in which they tried to change an already established game.

I've never played the SWG game, but I will tell you what I've heard.

Star Wars Galaxy started out as a skill-based MMO. If you wanted to be a sniper, you'd get a rifle and start shooting away, which gained experience in your rifle skill, while if you healed others, or looted an enemy, those would give you experience in their respective fields, first-aid and scavenging. I dont know if there were actual levels in the game alongside the experience for different skills, but I doubt it based on the system.

They then released CU, combat upgraded. From what I've heard, it was exactly that. The people at SOE (correct me if im wrong) completely re-worked the skill system and combat. People logged on and found that their skills were radically different now, and had effectively forced everyone to 're-learn' their own classes so to speak.

The next major update was NGE, or next generation or something. This was the proverbial final nail in the coffin. I dont know if they did this in this update, or the last, but they threw out the entire skill system in the favor of a classic Class system. Another thing I am not certain of when it was added, was that they had made the Jedi class (A prestige class) available to all.

If you want to hear the generalization I heard about it. It was that SOE, in fear of losing more and more of their subscriptions to WoW, had retooled SWG into a basic WoW clone set in their universe.

Like I said... anyone who has played the game correct me where-ever I was wrong (as im sure I am somewhere), I never played it, but I know quite a few people who have played it.

SOELA destroyed a vibrant game and community in the name of greed whiping out thousands of hours game time for at least 100,000 players. Twice, first with the CU then the NGE. In typical SOE fasion, unfinished and bugged as to be unplayable.
And when they complained they told them to gtfo. If not out right banned them.
 They are incompentent miscretins who are not worthy of your time or money.
 I myself played for over 1000 hours to my endgame of  Master Creature Handler to find it useless with the CU then removed as a profession all together with the NGE.
 

In a nutshell SOE lied, secretly developed another game (NGE) using subscription money from the original SWG, then sold an expansion for the 1st game that would be useless once the NGE went live, and used that money to carry them through the massive cancelled subscriptions from the NGE.

SWG (original version) was a skill-based sandbox game, with 250,000 - 300,000 players.  The NGE is a class/level based copy of WoW, with about 10,000 players...

SOE broke the law by using a virtual bait-and-switch tactic which backfired, then to alleviate a potential lawsuit they offered refunds for those who paid for the expansion ToOW, that was rendered essentially useless after the NGE went live only a week or so after the expansion was sold...

SOE then banned anyone who spoke out about the NGE in a negative way on the official forums.  They deleted posts, banned users, and basically removed all ethics from the way they dealt with the players who had given them money for 2+ years.

The NGE went live in Novemeber of 2005, by December of 2005 the game was dead and has not recovered.  Now the development team is tiny and untalented, there is little revenue from the game, LucasArts has given up on SWG, and SOE doesn't care about SWG.

SWG is dead.