I'm feeling kinda nostalgic at the moment. I don't know what exactly caused it, but I think this is worth posting. Just to forewarn you, this will be a wall of text, so you can skip down a bit if you want to get to the point.
I started playing SWG the day it came out. My dates are serving me too well, but I remember it was about five years ago now. I had been following it for over a year by the time it was coming out, and for a teen, I think that takes a bit of dedication!
It's pretty crazy the first time you log onto a MMO. I think the first feeling I had when I played SWG was one of being overwhelmed. There was just so much stuff to do. I literally spent the first few days of playing just making new characters to try new things: crafting, entertaining, brawling, marksmanship, and so on. It was just sort of incredible the first time I pitched a tent on Naboo and sat around a fire talking to other players--other people. It really was a great feeling for that first month or so.
It took me a while to really understand how the game worked. My feeling of excitement at the vast amount of content didn't die down for some time afterward! My pattern of creating characters and playing them for a while before repeating this cycle dominated my play for sometime. I've now been able to diagnose this as altaholism, and boy did I have it bad. But I distinctly remember the day that I created my first true character--one that I stuck with.
Xeiheo Reasoblin was born on February 4, 2004. I say born because, sad as it may sound, that day really was momentous event of sorts. Ask anyone who I play with--hell, even talk to--over the internet now days what my handle is. The answer will always be "Xei". I will always feel a bit of a debt towards SWG's random name generator for bestowing that name upon me, as it really has grown to be a part of me. Xeiheo was also the first character I was really able to role-play with. And ask any good role-player you know these days who their first character was and what their schpeil was, and I bet you they'll remember! It was just such a great feeling, owning that second identity, and that euphoria has never washed off of me.
From here, I also created a role-playing guild which grew to, at a time, be quite influential on my server. Guild administration was something I knew nothing of when I first started playing SWG; now I run a guild on WoW that has recruited 20 new members in a little over a week! To say I owe the beginning of that 'career' to SWG would be a vast understatement.
I guess what I'm trying to get at with all of this is, I feel an enormous gratitude towards Star Wars Galaxies. I've said this a lot already, and it may seem lame or sad; however, I really do believe Star Wars Galaxies had a pretty big impact on me as a person.
I think I don't need to explain how I walked away from Star Wars Galaxies. After over two years of playing, I simply quit with the release of the NGE. After two years of play, I walked away because I simply lost interest in the product. For the longest time, I have had some deep animosity towards SOE and everyone else involved with SWG, but I'm now coming to a certain realization: that hatred gets us no where. The CU and NGE have come. SWG is never going to be the game I once thought it would be. Cynical? maybe; truthful? absolutely! But I mean this in the kindest way possible. What it all comes down to is SOE, like any other company, is a business. When they have a product that is no longer making the 'moniez,' then it is time for that product to be changed or cut. SOE decided to change it.
Now, my only complaint comes from this angle: why didn't SOE fix problems as they arose in the first place? I still firmly believe that the original dev team behind SWG was one of the best in the realm of video game designers. It is what enthralled me with the game at such a young age. But there were just too many problems that went unanswered. It is like some geniuses created this almighty blueprint for success and somewhere in the process from design to execution, things were lost in the translation.
I realize this has been long and ramble-ish, but I've just wanted to say all of this for some time now, and after looking over some of my old SWG screenshots and vids, well... when better than now?
Cheers!