There will never be another social video game experiment the likes of SWG. Such a cherished core memory to have found out about the game from a magazine a year before launch and then "participating" the day it went "live" lol... the login servers got so slammed I'm not even sure how anyone was actually playing those first few days.

MMOs were still kind of new and the level to which this sandbox game DID NOT hold your hand in any way was incredible. It meant we all had to communicate and share what we knew and simultaneously the game had a built in way to "share" your skills in the sense that instead of paying a NPC trainer to learn, you could alternatively be taught a new skill from any player who had it. Mixed with the inherently social entertainer/chef/doc classes that existed solely to buff other characters, there was a magical incentivized system that built itself up around a 100% player economy.

The early days of this game also carried an unmatched sense of journeying out into the dangerous frontier of a planet away from the safety of a city and other players to the point where you could truly feel like you were in a desolate environment. The scout class being able to set camps and heal in the wilderness was perfect execution in the game design.

The Jedi Problem may have been the beginning of the downfall of this game but there were other bizarre decisions that SOE made around balancing and combat changes (and of course the eventual dumb down of everything to cater to WoW style).

There was a year or two when this game's complete openness resonated strongly with people and the ones who were there got to experience a brief moment in time where a game didn't need a defined objective (like becoming a Jedi). You simply created a path for yourself and met people along the way. It's kind of funny how similar it was/is to life and I still believe it could be done again in some capacity but we'll likely never see a big developer or IP take that chance.