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A number of good reasons why the Sith can't hold on to territory, equipment, or other bits of intergalactic stuff.

Would you want to use a revolutionary war musket, or an M16?
How about a Model T ford, or a M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank?

Ideas are eternal. Technology, is not.

That's a really good point.

That's why the Star Wars: Old Republic should NOT have a main focus storyline. MMOs are inherently open and based on user created plots. By adding a storyline, and a clumsy one at that, is detrimental. Galaxies provided the best template. A basic, overall plot (The Empire vs the Rebels), and left everything else up to the players. There was no heavy handed "Fight for freedom or for EEEEVIL!"

Galaxies was a great game. Why not improve on that template, rather than create and entire new one, that is based on shoddy work?

Plus, billing Star Wars: The Old Republic as The First MMO With a Story is painful, when the story is not what makes a MMO!

Leave the story to the players! Give a basic background, just enough to start the ball rolling! Let your customers fill in for you.

the games is not close to being out, please relax

I'm not necessarily the biggest MMO fan or player, but from what I've seen, all a company needs to make a profit off of a MMO is a relatively wide fanbase (who may need a little refresher on the main topic) and a pretty easy, basic story and game mechanics. After that, the MASSIVELY part of the MMO genre should kick in, because there needs to be an expansive universe for the player to make their own decisions and craft their own 'life'.

That's what made WoW the phenomenon it is today; people who loved playing Warcraft and Starcraft jumped at the opportunity to get in on Blizzard's newest endeavor, and combined with an easy to learn, yet expansive world, the ball got rolling and never looked back.  On a side note, how cool would a Starcraft MMO be?  But I digress...

What made Galaxies so great is that it tied into the movies pretty well.  People who don't delve into comics or books or anything else StarWars except the movies still could go around and have a good time, because they still could figure out what's going on.  

Here, with SW:OR, there's not really as big an interest, or a knowledge base.  Unless a person has played KoToR (2), or delved pretty extensively into the literature pertaining to it, there's not really a whole lot of common knowledge about this era in StarWars history.  

As far as the whole technology/aesthetics/"different eras but they look similar" argument...well, there's no real, easy, logical answer.  As far as a corporate standpoint goes, it would be smart to give people something they recognize, because, as my above point stated, it's you'd be hard pressed to find someone off the street that could tell you anything about the Sith Civil War or Malak or Revan.  

A person looks at that Republic Special Forces thinks 'OOH!Stormtrooper/ Clone!  I know what that is!"  Because lets face it, the two big symbols of the StarWars universe are lightsabers and Stormtroopers, among other things.  (BTW, did you know the term 'droids' is trademarked, and Battletech had to change its name from BattleDroids because George Lucas threatened a lawsuit?) Same thing with So people kinda are drawn into the universe there.  

As far as storyline-wise, the technology being relatively similar in 4000(?) years or so between OR era and Movie Era is bogus.  But as far as the aesthetic aspect is concerned, it's not totally far-fetched to think that the Kaminoan designers of the clone uniforms looked back at these Republic Special Ops people and said to themselves "That looks kind of cool!  I'm inspired to make something that looks like that!"  

Maybe after the defeat of the Empire, the Legacy Era Designers of the Paelleon were looking to recapture some of the old, fearsome Sith glory and were inspired to bring back that terror by designing what appeared to be an Old Republic Sith Battlecruiser.  

Its not unheard of in our world.  Coincidence happens--the swastika was a holy symbol in Hinduism for thousands of years befor the Nazis used it.  The designers of the American presidential memorials, Lincoln most famously, used the old Ancient Greek Ionian columns as an aesthetic piece for the memorials.  So it is POSSIBLE.  Not necessarily probable.

Wow, long post.  

There will be worse games out there I'm sure.

I love the amazing amount of BS they pack into their first QA question on the site:

"The Old Republic represents a new approach to online entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat, and groundbreaking companion characters."

A new approach to online entertainment... Let's see, can you think of any MMO whose devs would ever call it an old approach? I can't. Heck, even WoW says it! From WoW's general FAQ: "World of Warcraft differs from other MMORPGs in many ways."

Immersive storytelling... Yep, another generic claim. From WoW's: "Additionally, our quest system provides an enormous variety of captivating quests with story elements, dynamic events, and flexible reward systems."

Dynamic combat... Dynamic is defined as interactive... Which means: the player is involved in the combat. Nothing new there.

Groundbreaking companion characters... Hmm. In other words, you will get escort quests and an occasional redshirt to follow you around and get in front of that doorway you wanted to go through.

The game doesn't need to be out for you to see what it aims to achieve. And I, as a player who has a lot of MMO experience, can already see that their design is flawed, where MMO quality and innovation is concerned (I have no doubt they're going to make big $$$ with it). Bioware is trying to meld their singleplayer franchize with a MMO concept.

As SSAF said, MMO's are inherently open. They're at their best when they provide a loose background and an entertaining sandbox. Forget the storyline. Its fun only once. But a sandbox can be fun as long as there are people playing in it.

The next MMO which dares to break the mold and combines AAA content with 3rd persion perspective realtime twitch-based combat, complete with (for some reason developers always miss this one) a lock on melee combat system, sandbox style skill-centric (as opposed to gear-centric) character building and player-driven economy will be the next WoW. Throw in a good palette of social and roleplaying tools and you've got a game for everyone, from CS junkies looking for a quick fix to roleplaying nerds wanting to cut someone up with style.

All these companies who think that innovation is expressed through simple and shallow changes of already clicheized concepts are in it primarily for the love of the money, even when they're talking like they're in it for the love of the game. The mid-level designers maybe are, but the real bosses either aren't or belong to the ranks of the incredibly frustrated as they are forced to watch their dreams being gutted for the sake of bigger revenues.

Oh, and Starcraft MMO is coming for sure. Guess what Starcraft II is for - like Warcraft III, it's both a launching pad and a measuring tool for Blizzard to see if a new MMO would be viable. WoW, while still a giant, is getting a bit old. And there's a whole Sci-Fi playerbase out there, all alone and untapped...

@ ManSh00ter: Blizzard are already working on a new mmo (dubbed "next gen mmo") and it isnt starcraft. theyve specifically stated its a new IP entirely.

@ topic: I understand the hope that this will not become WoW in space with lightsabers, however the vast majority of mmo players play WoW and expect all new mmos to essentially be WoW 2 in a different skin. The mass of mmos dubbed "fail" by the standard mmo community is a sign of that.

Its new in development so dont take what you see too seriously yet, itll change

I really hope the combat is similar to KOTOR's with all those cool block/parry/attack animations.  I don't want an attack to hit me, do no damage, and have the word "block" appear above my head.  That's boring and overdone.  Hell, I wouldn't mind if this were a multiplayer KOTOR.  I just don't want this be a WoW ripoff.

@thingamabob: UNfortunately, the problem with Star Wars is that the movies are a tiny, tiny bit of the entire Star Wars culture and story. The EU is the actual meat of the franchise, and that's what fills up all of the main money making of Star Wars. Granted, it's mostly tied into the movies in that the same characters from the movies are occasionally in them, but really, Star Wars started out as a movie franchise, but it has transcended that. Sometimes I feel as though LucasArts has forgotten that fact. I'll admit that I'm a Star Wars geek, I have every piece of Star Wars literature produced on my computer, and I could answer any question put to me, which leaves me as a bit of a Star Wars purist. But really, when LucasArts tries to rehash similar ideas in order to lure a wider audience in, it's doing itself a disservice. We've had Jedi Outcast, Jedi Knight, Tie Fighter, X-Wing, and many other games that have some links to the movies, but they are only superficial and are never part of the story. The entire Jedi fillintheblank series was based around Kyle Katarn, who was unheard of. A brand new character, a brand new plot, and brand new story. There are precedents of LucasArts branching out and trying new things. For something as massive and new as a MMO (or would it be an MMO, it sounds better that why, i guess), it's surprising to see them sticking themselves in a rut, and not trying a new thing, based on their already enormous and loyal fanbase, as well as the previous resounding success of Star Wars: Galaxies (which unfortunately they dropped).

I guess it all comes from being spoonfed I suppose. Instead of allowing new ideas and letting the consumer decide, LucasArts seems to prefer to handfeed us their idea and treat their fans almost as ignorant and lure them along by the nose.
And I should probably be less judgemental of the continuity errors.

Oh and also, the problem with your idea with the Pellies, is that the Legacy era Empire has no relation to the Sith whatsoever, until the Sith took it over, which was long after the introduction of the Pellaeon class, so it is highly improbable that a Jedi sympathetic and actually good Empire would try and use Sith influences (considering the fact that their ruling family is almost certianly descended from the Fels and the Solos, and because their ruling family are Jedi. Well, Imperial Knights, but same thing.)

It's also irking that even though their are fascinating unheard of eras in Star Wars, like the Hundred Year Darkness, which was a long existing time in which the Sith owned the Republic and everything was crappy (they even had a dark age), LucasArts decided to just make a whole new era from scratch, rather than flesh out preexisting eras with plenty of room for embellishment.

My fingers are tired. And me too, I've been up since 6.

DUDE! I would totally go 1 on 1 against a jedi if you gave me a musket

Ehh, I hate MMO's. But I expect this one will be above average, simply due to the fact that you really can't screw up starwars, short of trying to make the science work (midichlorians = )

LOL have you ever heard of Star Wars Galaxies....teehee