I played SWG for almost a year. Got bored when I realized that every single one of the quests are the same. You do them for XP and cash and that's it. All of them are "kill x womprats" or "take this disk to Bestine".
Quests in WoW actually have a sense of accomplishment to them. I can't say why, but after completing them, you actually get a feeling of "Well, I'm glad I'm having an impact on the world." You attack fortresses and towns (instead of garbage dumps, ala SWG). And yes, the quests are still "kill x number wolves" or "get alcohol from these 4 cities and bring them here!" or "get 20 axes off the orcs", but it doesn't feel anywhere near as repetitive as SWG.
After a year of SWG, I finally realized that the whole game was built as a grind. You have to be really high level to do any PVP (in WoW, I've run into people my level from both sides many times). The much vaunted "professions" serve no purpose. You start the game as a marksman and a craftsman. You play to.... advance your crafting skill... That means hours of sitting in one spot, getting chemicals and crap, only activity being clicking the "find deposit" button when it pops up every five minutes or so.
In WoW, you play as say, a Warrior. Then you can get professions. Let's say you want to make some bags for yourself, so you get tailoring. The stuff you need to advance in tailoring you come across over the course of normal gameplay. Enemies drop stuff while you quest, so even if your goal is to get 100 linen (that's a whole lot at the lower levels), it doesn't feel like a grind. Then you skill up and make your bags, and you think "man, I wish I could make some armor for myself!" So you drop tailoring and pick up mining and blacksmithing. Think of the mineral deposits like any of the stuff that you'd use a sampler to find in SWG. Thing is, you don't have to sit around and grind for hours to get a lot of it. You can find the deposits with a handy "find mineral" option that puts dots on your minimap - and you run into them over the course of questing, or exploring, or anything. On top of that, there are about a dozen professions in the game, and they're secondary to your class, of which there are nine. Any class can have any profession, so instead of playing a game where you're main goal is to find minerals, your goal is to play your class and enjoy the game, and if you want to find minerals, you have that option.
I got back into SWG after Jump to Lightspeed came out, played for about an hour, and uninstalled it again. Same crap. Missions for space are boring and repetitive. The ships move slowly, and the controls are clunky.
This "Rage of the Wookie" expansion was nothing more than a plug for Episode III. Come on - General Grievious in the Original Trilogy? No thanks. ::cue "SWG raped my childhood!":: All that we have after both expansions is about a million Jedi running around, which ruins the Star Wars gaming experience.
I've been playing WoW since November now. My highest level is 32 (I'm pretty casual), but I've only explored about eleven zones (out of like... thirty - much more than the planet selection in SWG), I've gone into PVP and won, I'm loving the quests, and I've gotten a friend addicted too, and that's without the advantage of two expansions.
However, all that aside - the most important thing that seperates WoW from SWG is that the developers are actually adding content - and quality content, at that. New instances, new talents, the Battlegrounds, an upcoming "Hero" class, revamping a boring zone (the Barrens), etc etc etc. SWG has thrown 2 expansions (one of which was for the release of EpIII), a series of bugs, a combat upgrade that everyone already playing hated (I tried SWG again after they released it, played for an hour, uninstalled.) SWG simply doesn't feel like Star Wars. WoW feels very much like Warcraft, and with as many content patches as they're hinting too, it's only going to get better. I'm still anxiously awaiting the first WoW expansion, which, if Blizzard follows their usual pattern, will be awesome (see SC:BW and WC:FT).
So, that's my long winded rant about WoW and SWG.
You may all begin quoting it for truth.
Frightening the very small and very old since 1952.
