New Game Enhancements
From Chimaera SWG Wiki
The "New Game Enhancements" (also known as NGE) is another set of game changes which began testing on 4 November 2005, going live on 15 November via digital download, and became available in retail as the Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Kit on 22 November. Changes included the reduction of the 34 original professions to 9 "iconic" ones.
There were criticisms of the changes in some reviews, and negative player feedback was noted by media outlets outside the gaming industry, including CBS News, New York Times, New York Post and Wired Magazine. On Slashdot, John Smedley explained that they felt it necessary to revamp the game to the NGE in order to reverse the deterioration they were seeing in the subscriber base.
The development team affirmed this is their desired direction for the game, and they are slowly modifying parameters to address players' desires. This progress includes the re-introduction of many pre-NGE features that were removed, such as creature handling, target locking, auto-firing, the ability to fire special attacks from their keys, and the option to keep the camera behind the character, rather than the NGE's over-the-shoulder perspective.
Since then, the development team has given each profession a set of "Expertise trees" to bring back some complexity and differentiation to characters.
