Unfortunately I'm afraid you're right. That would seem to be the most logical, and most obvious reason for the change. And yes, you are correct on the second part as well. Started off as a nemesis character in Star Wars Tabletop games, and it just kind of stuck. It didn't take alot of imagination (especially after he shaved his head)

What the heck happened? We're back to KOTOR conversation styles once you get into chapter IX, and it is simply put, jarring. Is this a temporary hold before we get actual voice dialogue in these places? Is this the new way forward? What the hell?

Certainly not in this game at the very least. If there were to be a game designed specifically as an intergalactic mashup, with the full heading that continuity, canon, and logical sense were recklessly abandoned at the onset of development of the project, I would be all for it. There would inevitably be Krogan V. Mandalorian version of "gay chicken" http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/it-ends-in-triumph

The problem with creating items for "experimenting" is that inevitably people will find that some of the "experiments" just don't work, or don't work as well as others. You have an item that gives no bonus to Endurance and shoves it all in other bonuses means that essentially to balance out you would need another item that is purely Endurance, or for all of your other items to have higher endurance, in order to balance out. That creates an environment in which for certain items to really be useful, you have to get its mated pair. With how it stands now, there is a natural and orderly progression, with slight variances. This ensures that if you receive an item its guaranteed to actually be an improvement.

The only time this discussion really seems to come up is during the double xp weekends.

It's not mandatory, but why the hell would you NOT do it? The class story is easily what makes the game unique, and would probably be seen as the best part by the majority of the base.

Kel Dor need the mask to breath and to speak. Their native planet is a helium-rich environment, which they breath normally. Their voice on other planets with a heavier atmosphere (any oxygen rich environment, for example) would not be able to be heard by most other species. And that's not even to say whether they can breath normally without it or not (largely because I'm not sure. I doubt it.)

This may be an oversimplification, but that just sounds like a glorified chat-room to me, especially when the best part of the game isn't any part of the game itself.

I'm not quite buying into this explanation. You make it sound like back in 2003 A-holes hadn't discovered the internet yet. You also make it sound like SWG wasn't made by big business or try and attract as many people as it could (as every other MMO that's ever been made). It's a Star Wars franchised MMO that was made and supported by Sony Online Entertainment. In 2003 you would be hard pressed to get any more "Big Business". Let's also not forget that the Big Business interests in SOE had announced the Jump to Lightspeed expansion pack for Galaxies before the original game had even gone live. That is very much a Big Business mindset (also counting your chickens before they hatch but that's a different ball game altogether) I have a theory that you're not going to like. The community of Galaxies was the strongest aspect of the game because that's all that the game had going for it. I am never going to be convinced that an MMO that had player characters whose only purpose was to dance in a cantina is good game design.

You don't put something up on the front page that you're not able and/or willing to talk about at length.

That is the goal of every game yes. The goal of Bioware is in the "How?" Bioware has always been story first in its game-play. Their mission statement on the website clearly states as such. Now, no matter how good player housing is, it's not going to elicit serious emotions from the player. Ooh's and Ahh's certainly, and is there a potential to develop attachment to the property because it is actually something that you did. That said, Nobody's cried about thier houses or had a serious emotional response like is elicited from Bioware's other games. You can also quit pretending that you're Harrison Ford at any time. Fair enough, I may have read too fast and thought I saw THE instead of A. The point stands however, if the game is supposedly one of the best ever made, why has nobody tried to market that? It's been almost 3 years since the game was shut down for good and nearly a decade since the NGE "destroyed" the game. I would think that if the game really was that successful and popular, that in that amount of time at least one company would have at least attempted a knock-off of Galaxies.

the goal of The Old Republic is (or at least WAS) to bring about the best storytelling possible in a genre that had suffered completely without it for over two decades. To make something necessary that in no way helps create that dynamic storytelling is self defeating, and as such, will never happen. If I never have to hear about Galaxies again it will be too soon. The game is dead and gone. Can we stop beating the dead horse long enough for it to be buried properly?

For the Record, I don't even think you will find many people that consider Galaxies to be the best Star Wars game they've played, let alone the best MMO. You would be incredibly hard pressed to find someone who would say that Galaxies was superior to Knights of the Old Republic, which came out in the same year (2003). Knights of the Old Republic at the time won Game of the Year Awards from nearly every single publication that reviewed it, and even won that same award in the very prestigious Game Developers Awards ceremonies. Galaxies had won no such accolades that I am aware of.

If Galaxies is the pinnacle of the genre than how come nobody developing games in the genre, are making games like it anymore? Where are all the sandbox games that one would naturally think would be copying the absolute best? The game is dead in that is no longer playable, gone in that it will never be brought back online, and largely forgotten in that, for all intents and purposes, future generations of developers will likely look back at what went wrong with Galaxies rather than what went well. I won't go so far as to say that the game was beyond merit as it did have some good points to it, but the thing that will be remembered and studied about the game was why was never able to be a stable success? The game went through so many different iterations trying to balance itself out and maintain the numbers to be sustainable, and it could never do that up until the New Game Experience, which many people thought "killed" the game. The Old Republic always was, is, and will be, a "theme-park" oriented game. The goal for the game was to introduce storytelling to the genre where it had been previously absent, which has always been the singular focus of Bioware. Anything that is not directly a facet of that story-telling is essentially a minor distraction to keep people paying and playing. Space Combat will never be its own field like it was in Galaxies because that does not fulfill the goal of the game. The same will be true for housing and anything else that Bioware introduces in the future.

I really don't think that I am. My point was that It doesn't matter what "aficionados" or any other code word for snobs you choose, want. That population from Galaxies is so small and so temperamental that the opportunity cost to get or keep them isn't worth it, especially when many are already, though perhaps begrudgingly, paying and playing. That someone knows the entire Hall of Fame doesn't change the amount of profit gained from season tickets from someone who doesn't even know where the Hall is. That I could not only name the first 4 but all subseqent US Presidents doesn't make my vote more valuable than the neighbor who doesn't know how many people are in the Senate. And a person who played for thousands of hours in a different game from eleven years ago still brings in the exact same revenue from subscriptions as somebody who is brand new to the genre of MMO's.