prenge was much better than the new crap pal, and i don't mean this from just being an "emo" kid or whining about it, there were many, many things prenge swg had,

SWG was never perfect and was always flawed lore-wise, but as things went on they deviated more and more from the lore, rather than getting closer and closer like they should have.

many templates were possible from those who wanted to play the game in different ways, in some ways the NGE proff system makes things more simplified for people who want to grind up those templates, but it was far from necicary to remove them entirely and caused alot of problems

one example is UO, in UO there are many "starter" professions which are nothing more than giving you a head start on your template, so, instead of having 9 profs you are stuck with unless you shell out craploads of creds, you can pic the Template to start with but you can always easily switch or branch off or customize as you saw fit.

another problem the NGE had was it screwed the community, many elements that encouraged social interaction were removed and things were simplified, IE more immature players would show up, and would brag about being able to solo things, while in the old days, you were better off in a group to grind than you were doing legacy, and it was alot more fun cause you had people to talk to.

also they removed battle fatigue and wounds, effectively reducing the Entertainer and Medic related proff's purpose, they tried to counter this by letting ents and medics buff and heal etc, but it just doesn't make up for it.

the clone sickness thing is nothing more than a cred sink, and not a very good one at that.

Grouping was FAR better in the original, none of that lame pie boring as hell Legacy crap, you could talk to people while you were grinding and meet new people and get the community going better, you were also better off grouping because unlike the Legacy which sometimes has missions that are "too hard to solo" you have people who are FORCED to group even if they don't want to...and promote people who brag about being able to solo said mission at the same level that they said you would need a group for.

Grouping in SWG was different from other MMOs, unlike other MMOs it was good, and smart and made sense from a good game design standpoint. it took advantage of the fact that it brought people together and worked to help the community, instead of when you are in a group it dividing up experience and loot it actually not only gave everyone the same ammount of exp and loot AND even a Bonus for how many people were in the group.

for example, the way most MMOs do grouping (including NGE)

1 guy solos a creature, he gets 5000 exp and 500 creds/gold/adena/zenny/etc
guy joins a group with 4 other people, they kill one of the same creatures, he (and the others) get
1000 exp, 100 gold

the way Pre-NGE SWG did it (and the way all mmos should)

1 guy solos a creature, he gets 5000 exp and 500 creds/gold/adena/zenny etc

guy joins a group of 4 other people, they kill one of the same creatures he (and the others )get
5500 exp, 550 creds

another guy joins the group, they kill another everyone in the group gets
5600 exp, 560 creds

in fact it might have been an even higher percentage, so more like in the 5 person group it would be a wopping 10,000 exp and 1,000 creds, and in the 6 member group 11,000 exp and 1,100 creds

see? instead of trying to force people due to dificulty to group, thus promoting competitive natures even within a faction that is supposed to be tightly knit, you promote co-operation due to having mutual benefits for those who join a group. the system worked exceptionally well, as each group would gain exp bassed on the most powerful character there (IE if a noob was in a group with a vetteran, and the noob killed a critter that was hard for the noob to kill but the Vetteran would kill with one shot, the noob would get next to no exp if any exp at all, while the noob would have to attack and deal damage to something that would give the vetteran trouble in order to benefit) so it wasn't something that made the game TOO easy, just alot more fun and promoted a better community.

The reduced number of proffs does make things a bit easier for the pvpers and the Developers (who of course in the end were the REAL reason behind the NGE, they simplified it so they could work on it easier cause the Devs were too incompetent to code with the old system and not have boatloads of bugs, hell they still can't seem to fix anything without breaking something else in the process.)
but effectively killed crafters

say I want to make a YT-1300 in the Pre-NGE I just have to get about 4 boxes in Artisan then i can go and master Shipwright. however Post-NGE i have to Master Artisan, Architect and THEN Shipwright, all because they combined it all into "Structure Trader" yeah... big upgrade *rolls eyes*

Crafters were, aside from the Bio-engineers and creature handlers, the most screwed over by the NGE, the Ground REing does NOT make up for the fact that crafted weapons and components are crap compared to looted/REd components, once again reducing crafter's professions.

Beast master is one of the few things that came in after NGE, but all in all NGE sucks compared to the original, which was never remotely perfect, but was still better than the way it is now. preNGE SWG, even with the CU had potential, but the NGE killed that potential.

in an MMO that has a large emphasis on the comunity (at least one that used to) you don't want to have to be a lvl 90 in order to feel useful to other people, which is what the NGE does, if you aren't a lvl 90, you are almost totally useless.

there are currently numerous Emu systems coming out, SWGEMU was the first but there were alot of problems between the developers who wanted to get things done right, and those in the PR department etc that wanted to get things done fast, the Devs left SWGEmu and formed SWGANH, which is currently getting ALOT of progress,

other projects include OpenSWG which as the name suggests is open source, SWGpre-cu which i'm not sure how they are doing tbh. and a mod community called SWGEMODS who make mods (clientside) for the payservers as well as mods (Serverside) for the Emulators, like adding in weapons and armour that was not in Pre-CU such as Scout Trooper armour etc.

one mod project called OUTER HEAVEN, bears quite a resemblance to First Strike in many ways, they are devoted to keeping the game true to lore and in some ways are actually MORE accurate to lore than this mod appears to be. (from what i've read in terms of features etc)

Outer Heaven is also modular, so other free servers can pick and choose what features from it that they want based on community voting.

you can read more about it on this site here, http://outerheaven.freeforums.org/index.php the lead Devs for Outer Heaven are wanting to recruit some of the Devs from First Strike to help them out, of course, once FS is done and the Devs feel ready to tackle a new project.

i had got the game about 3 weeks before NGE. It WAS a fun game.... i quit galaxies a month later once my subscription wore out ...

yep, Tanaab, I also mentioned SWGANH and Open SWG and SWGpre-cu in my post.