Apparently, I've grossly under-estimated how badly a MMORPG development team can balls up a major content patch. Seems the much vaunted Combat Upgrade is anything but. Predicatably, the SWG Boards went crazy, but then Change is always Bad. However, closer inspection seems to show a great many genuine concerns.
Rather than try to interpret them myself, heres a sumary from the folks over at SWGPetition:
SWG Petition: CU Changes
Clearly some emotive stuff - some items on the list are a bit subjective, but I've seen enough other people covering the changes to get a general impression that on the whole, the Combat upgrade seems to have broken FAR more things than it was supposed to fix. It seems the core of the problems arise from a very rushed and half-arsed attempt to give the monsters 'levels', and tie all the player skills, abilites and equipment to these new levels. The upshot of it all is that attacking anything not your level will either get you little to no xp, or killed instantly. Crafting types out in the wilds are dead in ten steps, making harvesting resources almost impossible, and it seems that all pre-CU equipment and skills are now worthless. And Doctors, Entertainers and Chef are pretty much all out of business - relegated to the status of Roleplaying Nutters/Social Gamers only, as their buffs are now worthless. Seems everyone got hit by the nerf stick this time. At the moment, Jedi can't level at all!
It does indeed sound like a totally different game now - unfortunately for SOE, the only people left playing SWG now, are the people who quite liked the old game. Meanwhile, the huge mass of new/returning players they're probably aiming this upgrade at, are well into World of Warcraft, or whatever, by now, and probably won't care that much about a game they percieve to be irrevocably broken anyway.
I thought things did need changing, true, but clearly SOE have gone way, way too far the other way, and seem to have really cut a lot of corners, probably under fairly intense pressure from Upstairs.
Incidentally, did you know there's a new Star Wars film coming out soon?
I doubt we've heard the last of this. (I've still not tried this *cough*upgrade*cough* out myself yet - too busy 'burning twice as bright' in Saga of Ryzom. I have a window in a week or so - check back with me then!)