SWG: A timeline of changes
An Empire Divided
The original ground game lets you build a life in Star Wars. Mix skills from different professions, craft equipment, run a business, and build a city with your guild.
Players depend on each other. Weaponsmiths supply weapons, doctors provide buffs, and dancers and musicians help adventurers recover. You can become known for what you contribute to the community, even without being a fighter.
The launch is rough and unfinished, with bugs and missing features. But the freedom to make your own character and find your place among other players gives people a reason to stay.
Early Jedi unlocking revolves around holocrons and grinding professions. Relic, Myonax, and Noriko unlock their Jedi Padawans during this time.
Later in this era, in 2004, the Force Ranking System adds a brutal, unending PvP grind. Earning rank takes relentless work, and rank XP decay means you have to keep grinding just to hold your place. For us, it is much worse than vanilla WoW’s Rank 14 grind.
The era of Xarxet.
AUGUST 2004 · FORCE SENSITIVE VILLAGE
The Village questline replaces the profession-grinding Jedi unlock system. Still pre-CU.
DLC: Jump to Lightspeed
Space for combat and travel. Rebel, Imperial, and Freelance pilot careers; the Shipwright crafting profession; customizable ships; Ithorian and Sullustan characters.
JTL earns strong reviews, but its timing works against it. Less than a month later, World of Warcraft launches and draws players away from other MMOs, including much of Xarxet. Asheron’s Call and EverQuest take even bigger hits. Despite the warm reception, SWG gains only a few hundred net new players following JTL’s release.
Notable ships: X-wing, A-wing, TIE fighters, and YT-1300 (Millennium Falcon).
NOVEMBER 2004 · XARXET MOVES TO WOW
World of Warcraft launches, and most of Xarxet moves over.
Combat Upgrade
With WoW drawing players away, SOE tries to replicate its success by making SWG’s combat more familiar to that audience. The CU arrives as a sweeping overhaul that, to many existing players, feels like a knee-jerk response to WoW’s popularity.
The CU replaces the old combat queue with a WoW-style cooldown system, drastically reworks abilities, and introduces colorful ability icons. Combat shifts from queuing actions to watching cooldowns.
Weapons, armor, and professions are rebalanced around more defined combat roles, with visible combat levels becoming central to character strength. For many returning players, familiar characters now play very differently.
Mix-and-match profession templates remain.
FRS and Jedi Knight Trials are disabled. Existing Knights keep their titles, but new Jedi can only complete Padawan trials and train their skills.
This marks the end of pre-CU.
APRIL 2005 · THE NIGHT BEFORE THE CU
Renescent helps Yuki complete her Jedi Knight Trials literally the night before Combat Upgrade goes live.
DLC: Rage of the Wookiees
New planet Kashyyyk, more than 100 missions, new ground adventures and a space sector, asteroid mining, and cybernetic parts.
Notable additions: Eta-2 Jedi Starfighter, ARC-170, and Varactyl mount.
DLC: Trials of Obi-Wan
New planet Mustafar, quests involving Obi-Wan’s spirit, and the HK-47 storyline with challenging group encounters.
Notable extras: Lava Flea mount, Mustafarian Underground Bunker, and Transport Skiff.
Early access begins in October; general release follows on November 1.
New Game Enhancements
The NGE replaces the flexible profession system with nine core professions, removes mix-and-match character builds, and introduces faster, shooter-style combat. Familiar professions disappear or merge, while guided quests push SWG further from its player-driven sandbox.
The players still here have stayed for what makes SWG different. Making it more like WoW takes away much of what they enjoy. Players who want WoW are already playing it.
Jedi becomes a starting class available to everybody, balanced to be no more powerful than the other combat classes. For players who spend thousands of hours unlocking Jedi and developing their characters, that feels like a slap in the face.
This overhaul arrives only months after the CU, with its announcement coming just days after Trials of Obi-Wan goes on sale. Expansion refunds follow. According to the developers’ retrospective, 25% of the active playerbase quits within a month.
Our server uses SWG’s pre-CU foundation, with selected later additions like the Eta-2 Jedi Starfighter.