This June 26th release is a horrible idea. I have been beta testing SWG for over 2 months, the moment they gave the release date for the game I deleted the SWG folder from my hard drive.. realizing that I can no longer say 'this is just beta, this stuff will be fixed sooner or later,' but that this is actually the final game.. this is what people will be paying $50+ for.. I cannot just say that the game is buggy, I can say that it is, for the most part, completely unplayable. Over the past 2-3 patches, it seems for every one bug they squash, 2-3 new ones are born.. I am not even kidding about that. I cannot suggest to anyone to get this game until about November/December..
The crafter: They haven't balanced any of these classes at all, in my opinion.. you can become a Master Architect (one of the highest professions in the game) in a matter of hours.. is this how MMORPGs are supposed to work? With this latest patch they've broken the Armorsmith profession almost completely.. giving no tim to test the new implementations they'd forced on it.. There's so much more beyond balance that is far more important, but the NDA is still under effect.
The combat professions: Brawler, Scout, Marksman. I'll start out by saying that this game has the most boring combat in any game I've ever played.. I'll also say that there is nothing STAR WARSY about it. In many cases of PVP (trust me, you won't even care about PVP after trying it out in the game..) it's whoever gets the first shot off. In terms of cross-combat such as Brawler/Marksman, it is whoever is in their ideal range when combat is initiated. As for scout, this is an entirely broken profession, this profession equires 3 types of experience.. one from setting up camps, one from using traps, and another from (mostly) harvesting resources from creatures you have killed. Now the latter part of that takes up half of the trees in the profession.. meaning there's a lot of killing to be done.. but with a newbie gun/knife? Something to know, as a marksman you are given weapon certifications as you make your way up through each tree (whether it's pistol, carbine, or rifle.) Therefore in order to have better than newbie weaponry you'll have to pick up either brawler or marksman and begin running through these professions in order to be a viable killer.
Entertainer: So you want to be a Master Entertainer? How about a Master in the elite entertainer professions such as Dancer or Performer? Go to a cantina.. type /dance. Go to work, go outside, go to the movies. Now there have been rumors of gating the AFK Ents and I'm sure at some point they will do this.. so with the next part I'll show you how to get past this gate..
The Lowly Artisan (crafter): So this is a big deal, digging up resources. Why? You need resources to craft things. One tree of the Artisan consists of Survey I-IV.. normally this can take 3-4 days to get through.. Survey is another word for digging up resources. But you don't feel like spending 3-4 days with your lowly artisan building him up the normal way? One word: MACRO. This can also un-gate any Entertainer gating rumors. Here's the plan, go into your SWG directory, create a text file.. call it samp.txt Open this, type "samp: /sample; pause 360; /stand; /pause 5; /sit; /pause 100; /stand; /pause 5; /samp;" without the quotes of course. What does this do? ok.. /sample is the manual term for DIG THIS RESOURCE.. so you do that for 360 seconds (until the average artisan's Action Points runs out) then you sit for 100 seconds (the amount of time needed to regenerate them.) Having /samp; at the end makes this a loop..
Bounty Hunter: With the latest patch they've introduced 90% of the BHs abilities/weapons. Who in their right mind believes that 9 days is enough time to fully test/debug an entire class? Smuggler falls into the same category.. due to BUGS in the patch before this "final" patch, you could not become as smuggler up until now.
Jedi: OK, everyone wants this, no one's getting it for a while.. know why? It's hard to get they say.. that and it's not really done.. They're testing it internally amongst their QA.. Does anyone think that's a bad idea? If it takes about 10,000 users to fully test other classes.. how would an in-house QA be able to properly test an entire class (AND CLASSES.. as it is assumed that there is a Dark Jedi Class, Jedi Class, etc.) Some hints have been gven that you need to use all of your skill points (points used to buy skill boxes in a class.. you are given 250 at start and each box is from 1-6 points) in order to become a Master Jedi Knight (or whatever) Didn't Yoda once say that you must unlearn what you have learned.. in order to become a Jedi Master? Yeah..
The Medic profession is broken in the same way the Scout profession is.. you need another class in order to become effecient.
Non-character: Inner city lag, unbelievable.. If you're not on a top of the line machine you will experience horrible lag while in cities and some people with higher up computers even complain about inner-city lag. This new patch introduced the rubber band effect.. happens when you come close to cities in most cases.. you walk 5 meters, suddenly your 2 meters behind yourself.. it's very annoying and hard to watch. Some of the worst bugs are the ones that cause crashes, whether it's a crash straight to the desktop or just a freeze up.. it's always terrible. It happens in many areas of the game.. I've crashed many times while walking towards a city, crashed when exiting options, crashed when editing something in options..
The stat bug: This bug has been around for so long, and they're still asking for input about it.. you'll take some injuries in battles and all of a sudden these injuries won't regenerate.. at some point I was at -100 on three of my regeneration stats.. that is something that isn't supposed to happen and has been happening for a month or so now.
Server/Database Lag: This is a scary one for people who don't know about it.. say you just bought your first house and planted it.. after it "pops up" you take a walk around inside and enjoy the house.. nice isn't it? Well let's say you walk towards the city to check out the City Bazaar (aka broken Ebay machines) whe you return you find that your house has vanished.. This is caused by lag in the server/database. I would be horrified if something I spent 2-3 days working on/saving the money for has just vanished.. sometimes this problem can be solved by simply logging out/in.. but when the server has been up for over 2 days it seems like the only fix is a server reset.. which keep the server offline for 45 minutes usually.. they claim to have a stable server?
Battlefields: Imagine the stupidest thing you can imagine, then run into a wall as hard as you can.
Creature Pets and NPC Pets: There's a profession that the scout leads into called Creature Handler.. there are also Faction (rebellion/empire) Perks that can allow you to purchase NPC Pets. All I can say is that as a member of the empire I've never had an NPC pet that worked properly, neither has my friend who was a creature handler. I think the latest bug is the inability to attack. The last time I played I was with my Storm Trooper Sniper and my Imperial Trooper Wuss.. just roaming the desert looking for a reason to play after I'd read the horrible Release Date post.. I ran into a Rebel General.. initiated my attack.. told my pets to attack.. told them again and again. So then I died. But that's nothing compared to the woes of the creature handler.. my friend has never been able to keep a pet for more than a day.. they vanish on him in a matter of hours, and unlike houses, they don't come back.
I could go on forever, I really could.. but I think I've done enough.. I do believe that this game has potential, but it's not going to be tapped on June 26th. This is a Christmas game at best.