I really think that in overall concept, SWG was the most promising MMORPG released to date. I loved the large variety of professions and the fact that you didn't even have to do anything combat oriented if you didn't want to. I also liked the fact that it was accurate to the story line (being between episodes 4 and 5) with very few jedi being in existance (and those that were had to mainly remain hidden or face perma-death if found and killed). It put the focus back on everyone else (non-jedi) who make up 99.999 percent of the Star Wars universe of the time. I had a weaponsmith/armorsmith who made a killing farming nuclear power with our guild's power company. We'd find the top quality patches of radioactive and drop a billion harvesters across the patch to farm it and make a killing. I'd use the money to buy other top materials to make the best possible weapons and armor. It was fun doing it and building a very good reputation on the server for top quality gear.
Where I believe they made mistakes (or at least where they started in a long series of mistakes) were having characters unlock Jedi slots by grinding and mastering different professions over and over. This is speculation, but I believe that they had originally set the profession masteries to a very low level (possibly 5-6) to unlock. They underestimated players "hamster like" qualities of running in the wheel all day (grinding professions) to unlock their slots and therefore had to adjust the limits closer to 20 to unlock their jedi slots.
The game went down hill when players all caught on to this and began the non-stop profession mastery grind to unlock. They then made it more direct (and grind-like) by adding the whole Force Sensitive grind/profession tree to allow everyone and their mothers the chance of being Jedi. Of course, PVP was useless at this point if you weren't a Jedi. Jedi were everywhere and became very powerful being that they didn't have to hide as much any more. Bounty Hunters had to team up in large groups to take them down and with Perma-Death removal, it didn't matter if they did, really.
They basically tossed the story line to the side in efforts of allowing everyone to be the big winner by giving Jedi to anyone who'd grind enough.
If they'd just stuck with the original concept, kept Jedi extremely rare and hardly ever seen, and improved the process of being a Jedi, the game would likely remain a huge contender. What I think would've worked best for choosing who was Jedi and not would be to have random CD-Key's chosen as Force Sensitive. That way, regardless of grind, you're a Jedi based on luck. Either you are, at birth (purchase) or not. Also, you'd have to grind a character up a significant way before finding out if you're force sensitive or not to prevent little rich kids from buying 50 copies of the game to try it and toss if it wasn't force sensitive. Also different keys could have different levels of force sensitivity (the force being stronger with some than others).
But before I get flamed for the suggestion, keep in mind that I'd prefer living Jedi to be a truly rare thing. If anyone happened to be Jedi, they'd find it extremely difficult to see just how strong the force was with them. And with perma-death in place, they'd have to start over from scratch if they got too obvious about it.
So destroying the story by flooding the game with Jedi, weak/klunky expansions, rediculous updates that dumbed the game down significantly and refusing to listen to the player base. Not to mention taking months/years to fix launch bugs. GG SOE. Thanks for ruining what could've been the best MMORPG.
