same here. if i am going to buy the galaxies game then i might as well know how it works. seems like there are 3000 on there at a given time although
The game is cheap and you're not going to be out much if you buy it and things don't pan out. They've done an admirable job, but the issue is that it is taking forever for them to complete it and more and more people are just losing interest. I believe they've been working on it since 2004. At first, the team working on it was talented but quite frankly, were jerks to much of the community and quickly lost lots of support, so they got their act together and have been better since then. One thing I don't like is that they don't seem to have a consolidated project plan/tracker which is kept up to date so you can see the progress. No one knows exactly where it stands now -- they could be 4 months away or another 4 years and the only answer they will give is "it will be done when it is done." This is one reason why I won't donate money to the cause -- I still think they're not doing an adequate job communicating status and should at least give some hoped-for timelines. A once per week or month update isn't enough IMO; they really need that consolidated project plan/tracker for all of us to review as I personally don't have time to read through months of updates to find out where they're at.
Many of the actual systems do work, but a few may need some minor tweaking to make them right. Still, if you want to play SWG, the SWGEMU is your only option and is the best effort to date to recreate SWG. Also, the SWG devs did meet with LucasArts years ago and the rumor is that LA assured them that no lawsuits would take place as long as they required people to own a copy of the game and as long as they didn't profit from it. I'm not sure if Disney shares that opinion, but the game is no longer live so I don't see the harm in letting emulation servers exist.
Oh, and about your question regarding expansions -- JTL isn't in the game yet and won't be for quite some time. IIRC, all the expansions were given away free at the end, so I'm not sure if you'll have to buy them or not. At any rate, judging by the development pace so far, I'd be surprised to see JTL in there in the next 3 years. I'd honestly be surprised to see version 1.0 of the server in the next two years. It is hard work and these developers have lives and real jobs too.
(Also, there are many client mods and tweaks out there, such as an unlimited FPS mod (SWG is capped at 30 fps out of the box) and high-res textures, which I still need to install)
there were always jedi you just had to unlock them
Technically, I think the game launched without Jedi and they were added in one of the first publishes. When progress toward Jedi wasn't being made fast enough in the eyes of the developers, they introduced the holocron system which was the beginning of the downfall of SWG in the eyes of many. Personally, I think Jedi were way too plentiful in the game given the era the game was set in and they should've kept Jedi permadeath in the game.
The EMU is awful for far more reasons than I have the patience to list right now.
It isn't that bad.