Star Wars Galaxies: The Escapist: Blowing Up Galaxies

In the latest issue of The Escapist, Allen Varney explores what went wrong with SOE's Star Wars: Galaxies' New Game Experience:

"As WoW barreled toward 5 million subscribers, SOE launched SWG's Publish 25. The NGE replaced the combat system with a shooter-style twitch game, reduced the value of crafting and entertaining, and collapsed 34 professions into nine classes. Jedi Knight powers, once obtained only after torturous grinding, were now widely available. Creature Handlers and Bio-Engineers, previously stunted by the CU, vanished.
"The launch, like the original game's, went horribly: awful bugs, broken quests, lag. But these paled beside the main problem. For an unexpectedly huge number of players, the issue - the overriding issue that has burned in their heart down to, lo, this day and hour - was betrayal."

Click here to read Varney's essay, Blowing Up Galaxies.