I took the time after installing my new vid card to try it out twice. I didnt' need to re-subscribe because all closed accounts got a free 15 day trial. Also I still had it installed, the update for the new content took about 2 hours to download. But anyway.
I logged in tuesday for maybe an hour. The only person on was Aftokratorikos who grew bored of WoW end game and wanted to see if SWG had made any improvements with the new content. The next day I logged in again and was maybe on for a half hour and just talked to an old friend of mine while grinding for a bit.
Now here's my review.
The changes are awesome. IMO it is how SWG should have been all along in reference to combat and PvP. Its way better now that things are defined by sepecific classes. But let's be honest, they totally ripped off WoW in forms of UI, profession specs and combat balance. The left click to attack function is actually very nice and works very well. The only thing that took getting used to was selecting abilities with the number keys and then executing them with the rick click. But either way, it's a huge improvement.
The bad thing. The mass unannounced revamp put the final nails in the coffin of SWG. In my opinion, it should have been released as SWG 2, and not a huge change to the existing game. In doing this, many many many dedicated players were appauled that SOE took their existing unique characters and ripped them away, forcing them into specific and somewhat limited profession choices, like water going fromn a bucket to an icecube tray.
The game is empty now. There was a total of 1 single person on from my friends list (which i deleted and updated in july, so it's not like i was expecting to see chron or twenty-to-life online). There is plenty of content to explore, instanced dungeons, story driven quests, but absolutley no one to do it all with.
SOE made the mistake of dumping this patch because the only players remaining were the ones who didnt give a shit about combat balance. They were there to enjoy the characters they created over 2 years ago as they were. All the combat whores and pvpers left over a year ago with the release of WoW, if not months before that.
Changing the overall game on everyone without more than a week of notice or testing was a huge slap in the face to the players who stuck through all the bugs and inbalance. Those players made their own content, and when SOE made an actual good Star Wars game, they took that content away too put functional stuff in its place. They should have just made a new game entirely and marketed it to a brand new audience rather than revamping what a handful of people took years to create.
So in closing. The game is awesome, but it's a single player game now. And that just kills the fun and feel I had back in June 2003. The games dead, and while I had alot of hope for it, I'm never logging in again.
RIP SWG, it's finally over.