Started a month after launch, met a creature handler who gave me a Wrix I named Kha and he followed me until the last day I played (with a paus during the first part of the NGE). Different incarnations of course. Wrix - Gurreck - Bio-Engineered 60pt gurreck.
Wierdly enough, knowing it's only code, I'll miss him.
But the best part of SWG and what kept it going was the social aspects of the game and space. Without those the game would've cancelled 6 months after the NGE I bet.
Personally, I don't feel the NGE was the worst thing that happened to SWG even though it removed Kha and all my other pets, the absolute worst part was the CU. Here is why:
It added levels and (IMO) that killed the game. Nothing could recover SWG after that. I was so very tired of the game and what they'd done to it before the Mustafar expansion that when they announced the NGE I felt a bit of hope. Of course, it was crushed. Still, the CU had already killed it for me.
But I have to say though, the combat and beast mastery at the end of SWG's life was better than the Pre-CU and CU. Combat in Pre-CU was mashing two buttons as a rifleman, hoping it would not kill you (the drain from skill use could kill you).
So, if they've kept the non-level skill-trees from Pre-CU, updated to the Creature Handlers to what Beast Mastery became and added a similar combat system to NGE, it would've been a perfect Star Wars game where Tusken Raiders in Fort Tusken actually were dangerous.
