I never played Star Wars Galaxies, but I read that when it came out it was very sophisticated, and not everyone could become a Jedi. When people left the game in droves they nerfed it so that pretty much everyone was a Jedi.

How does this game compare?

Scifi vs Fantasy

Can we compare hot fudge vs cold fudge next?

Hot fudge ftw...

I tried a pre NGE server of SWG and I did not understand it. The game seemed empty, combat did not make any sense and the interface was hard to understand. I was only on it for about a week before I gave up. It probably would have been better if there were some player I could ask for help, but I highly doubt the server had a large population.

That did depend on which server.
Because there was so many of them some where rather... unpopulated yes.
Heck they even closed down 12 of them recently. Think it was 12 anyways.

I'm not sure what the rules of this forum are on this topic but let's just say that this took place post NGE.

Post NGE?
To most SWG players there is no such thing. :p

SWG when it first released was a masterpiece, if it stayed it's course it would be as much of a hit as WoW is today.

Becoming a jedi was a long and tedious process. It could take months to complete the trials to become a jedi.

Then, they release NGE and CU updates. Which dumbed down the game by a huge amount. It merged their great diverse class system (Which had unlimited possibilities) into 9 default classes. They also tried to implement a FPS aspect into the game with CU, that had no place. Some will argue that it's fine now, yet those are the same people who never played pre-NGE/CU and they are idiots.

Basically, SWG when it first released was a shining beacon of MMO gaming. It was by far the best MMO game I have ever played. When they patched it with NGE/CU, a MASSIVE amount of people left and the game died.

How does this game compare?

When SWG first release, it would emit a shadow over this game that STO could never get out of. STO doesn't compare one bit to SWG.

Post NGE/CU? STO wins that battle...

Well, these players took that to the extreme and were playing pre NGE again.

Indeed, SWG doesn't exist post NGE/CU in my mind and a lot of people I know.

It died that day, the BIGGEST failure in Gaming history. When SOE destroyed their diamond mine.