Star Wars Galaxies tries again with a Galactic Senate, and a new hope for the game as we once knew it

I'm a huge Star Wars nut, so naturally, back when Star Wars Galaxies came out I rushed out and got it the day it came out. I played it for a long time with a bunch of my friends. That was before the dark time, before the Empire, I mean SOE decided to "improve" the game by completely destroying it. I played it for a bit with the new changes, but it never was the same. It does appear that Sony is trying to make up for some of their past transgressions with the formation of the Galactic Senate.

The Galactic Senate is made up of a group of players nominated by the SWG community. The Senators can propose topics for a vote, request a redress of issues by the dev team, and vote on Senate legislation. While I feel that this is a good move on the part of Sony, I think the Senate will end up being about as useless as it was in the movies. This is already apparent as the Senators were nominated by the community, however, they were actually chosen by the Emperor himself SOE.

I'm doubting that this will ever restore the game to its former glory. Now I'm eagerly watching the OpenSWG project, as they are re-creating the game as we knew it. They have made a great deal of progress over the past few months and are fast approaching the public testing phase.

SWG's Galactic Senate [via wonderland]