Bump.

Just returned since leaving the game out of boredom/lack of content in early February. Can someone please give me an update on some of the things which have been added/improved? New armor sets? Raids? Etc?

Pretty much this. The first Darth Bane novel does a fantastic job narrating this process when Bane decapitates Sirak while he begs him for mercy.

There really weren't THAT many good Jedi. And by good I mean like hero status good like Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, etc. Most Jedi were not able to stand up against a good amount of blasters. You should read Darth Bane: Rule of Two. They have a lot of excellent fight scenes between the Jedi and Sith armies, and it describes how a lot of Jedi (and Sith) were both cut down by blaster fire, speeders, etc. That's why Vader was able to breeze through the Temple with relative ease. In fact, the 501st WITHOUT Vader more than likely could have gotten the job done. I think it's written somewhere in the RotS novel that Sidious sent Vader on the Temple mission to further his descent into the Dark Side.

What are the definitions of the Old Republic timeline wise? I'd think that you could squeeze in the Darth Bane trilogy into the Old Republic category.

I don't think that SWG was on life-support. It wasn't doing well, that's for sure. But I feel like the game had mostly recovered from the NGE around 2007. I will always prefer Pre-NGE SWG to Post-NGE SWG, but at that time the game felt that it had become what I think the developers had wanted it to be when they made the big change. Sure, the subscription list wasn't top notch by any standard, but it was doing a lot better than some of SOE's other games. Typically with SOE we see a common trend that shows that a game is dying, and is probably going to be shut down soon. It always starts with going F2P, and then SOE implements some other gimmiks to keep people intrested, but ultimately the announcement of shut down is released. With SWG it was different. The F2P came months after the announcement to shut down, and it was only available to active subscribers, and access for new subscribers was shut down. I really believe what the Developers posted on the forums about them being taken by surprise with the shut down. They were activly pumping out new content, and the things that they were putting out around 2009-2011 were pretty big projects, really, and I don't think so much work would have been put into them if they had been thinking that the game was going to shut down. What happened is that the contract that LucasArts had given to SOE for the Star Wars IP was going to expire and they had two choices. Either renew the contract, or shoot the horse. It doesn't surprise me that Lucas decided to pull the plug. After all, Lucas loves monay, and it was obvious from the initial announcement that SWTOR would be a lot more successful than SWG after the success of the KOTOR games, and BioWare's reputation for making a good story. LA decided to go with the option of what would make them the most money, and that's really no shock. But it was probably for the best. There really is no way that both games could have survived together. Once SWTOR was released only a handful of loyal players would have been left in SWG, even after the initial sparkles of TOR had worn off, and people were going back to their previous game - the subscriber rate would still be a lot lower than before TOR was launched. Had that been the case, then there's no doubt in my mind that SWG would have gone down the path of previous SOE titles like The Matrix Online, and go F2P and everything else that encompasses a dying game. If that had happened I think the whole thing would have been a lot sadder than when the announcment came out of the blue. SWG did do a lot of things right, though. But, I credit that to the style of the game being a sandbox. I think there are things that every game should take from SWG, mostly it's crafting and player housing system. But then again, there are plenty of things from other games that SWG should have taken. It really is dissapointing though how it all went down. SWG went out with a wimper, not a bang.

Played 2004-2011. Gave one example.

SWG was great, but some things definitely needed to be fixed. The crafting system was very great, but I'm not sure how I felt about crafted armor and clothing having no level requirement, even when stated with 35's in them. Brb running around with my level 22 Bounty Hunter with the same gear as my level 90 Bounty Hunter minus Heroic Jewelry & Weapons.

Why is it always the Jedi who ignite their sabers first in duels vs sith? I would think that a Jedi would try to find any diplomatic solution, and only use their sabers once they were threatened by one first. Think of all of the instances in the movies where we see Jedi igniting their sabers first. -Anakin & Obi-Wan vs Dooku (1) -Anakin & Obi-Wan vs Dooku (2) -Kenobi vs Grevious -Windu & Masters vs Sidious -Obi-Wan vs Anakin (Obi-Wan ignited first, even though in the book Anakin did) -Yoda vs Sidious -Luke vs Vader (1) -Luke vs Vader (2) You would think that it would be the Sith that drew first. Anyone know why this is?

This. SWG never actually had any storyline that lasted a particularity long time. The longest I can think of is back in NGE during the Legacy quest line which took you from 1-60ish, and even during that I couldn't really make sense of everything that was going on. The different theme parks were kinda cool, but they were all finishable in less than a day.

When I was around 8 I think I saw my fist SW film, still on VHS before any DvD versions came out. Would watch the original 3 in my friends basement. I loved it a lot, but SWG really sealed the deal for me being a star wars fan.

what kinda stuff does luke pull later on?

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction is so far my favorite SW book. I've probably read it at least 6 times. There are some other good ones, but it's just so full of Sith and Old Republic lore AND being very well written makes it hard to beat. I go back to it while trying to get through other SW books.

This is cool, thought you guys would like it. At 1:20 is when the Imperial March starts.

I haven't read the book yet. But hold up.