If you want constant heroic activities like in JKII or the like, yeah, you'll be disillusioned with SWG.
There is "downtime" in the movies. Luke doesn't get to fire a blaster until the detention center, tho the Tusken Raiders kick his butt early on. Han gets to blast Greedo and Obi-Wan slices up that pug nosed guy and the Aqualish in the cantina, but they didn't have much action.
Take Han tho. He's in a cantina chillin' out. He accepts a Rebel faction mission to smuggle two passengers to Alderaan. A bounty hunter finds him, he deals with him. He then avoids a firefight and gets himself into an Imperial base. He fights his way out, and finishes his mission (along with rescuing the Princess). All of this you can kinda do in SWG (not sure about rescuing Princess Leia, but hey, you might get to "rescue" some other factioned NPC.) You'll be able to take factioned missions or just duke it out with the other faction if you're so inclined. However, you gotta remember... you're only about 20-30% of the player base. The rest just want to be a "citizen" and not deal with the PvP aspects. After all, the Star Wars galaxy is filled with a lot of non combatants. It only makes sense to be able to do that as well in terms as a player character.
Am I excited about the game? Yeah. I really enjoy the Star Wars universe (movies, books, some past games) and I like MMORPGs for the most part. The designers really listen and interact with the community (much like our wonderful HTC staff, tho I think the SWG guys are influenced more by the vocal minority!) in developing the game. From the information released on their system, Evercrack in space it isn't. No leveling, everything is skill based, yet true usage based, and creation based like UO. In terms of fighting, it'll be kinda like leveling, you have to shoot stuff to get better with a blaster, yet with creation skills, people have to USE your items for you to gain skill. In UO, you just cranked out item after item to sell to NPCs or just throw away.
It promises what I want. Will I get to be an Imperial and shoot at rebels and criminals? yeah. Will I get to be a rebel and shoot at Imperials and criminals? yeah. Will I get to be a neutral and be a musician in a cantina? yeah.
Even have a
chance to mysteriously become Force sensitive. Eventually, there will be a space sim where I can pilot my own freighter or star fighter (I miss Privateer!)
Do I take it with a grain of salt? Hell yeah, WWIIOL taught me never to judge something before it's out.
(sorry this got long!)
