SWG had a lot of great ideas and a lot of good things going for it. Unfortunately, it was also a grind-fest. People HATE that, as has been clearly illustrated by the utter demise of grind games like Everquest and the meteoric rise of quest-based games like WoW. The SWG dev team failed at the most critical point for any MMO, listening to your player-base.
People didn't want SWG to become WoW. They just wanted to get away from the grind. So after combat revamps, upgrades and whatever else they tried to call it, they gave up, cut everything that made SWG what it was and turned it into another class-based WoW-type game. At which point I, and a lot of others, promptly chucked it out the window never to be seen again.
The ability to multi-class the way it did, the completely player driven economy, the social classes of entertainers and artisans. Those are what made SWG unique and cool and made it feel like "the real thing" if you will.
But they promptly turned around and killed that.
I enjoyed the KOTOR games, but am happy to see a new SW-based MMO. The time I spent in SWG is still some of my favorite MMO time simply because of the subject matter. Star Wars is flat-out cool, and although a single-player game is fun for a month or so, MMO's can go for years if properly maintained by their development team. Which is why a lot of us are willing to chuck 15$ into the abyss every month.
I understand the reluctance to "pay to play" but the simple fact is that these games are (generally) more engrossing, more varied, and more interactive than any other games out there. If Bioware truly can add the element of "story" to this MMO, it will hands down be the best MMO yet. I wish them all the best. It's ambitious, but if they pull it off, it'll be an amazing game.
I am very much looking forward to this game and hope they can bring it off with all of the features they're promising. Heck, even if it sucks, I'll probably play it for a while anyway. I played SWG for a few years and it really went downhill toward the end of that time.
Just my 2 creds.
-Nyx
PS - GCN is right about oversaturation in the MMO market. The only good thing about that though is that there is enough selection and variety, that players are being exposed to enough MMO's to know what makes them good, and what makes them cookie cutter jokes. This helps the good MMO's rise to the top, and the bad ones die quick, painful deaths. It's a good thing in the end. Though a lot of people trash it, WoW is an excellent MMO and has survived for it. While games that really just rip off other games (poorly) like Tabula Rasa and others have tanked and died.
Saturation may cause a lot of competition, but competition is good for the players. It drives the developers to innovate and create new, exciting experiences in order to stay on top of the market.