That's what I consider a very good question. I too am a huge SW fan. Let me break it down to you with how I've experienced Galaxies and then you can judge for yourself.
My experience with Galaxies started when they first announced it. I followed it's development and played the game during Beta Phase 3. At first the game rocked, but as I got into it I discovered how buggy it was. The one that bugged me the most (pun intended) was the fact that you would buy a shuttle ticket, click on the droid and the damn shuttle would eat your ticket and you'd end up where you were leaving from, then you'd have to go buy another ticket and wait another 10 minutes for the shuttle to arrive. It was a serious time/money drain. On top of that I was playing by myself. Eventually I just sort of stopped playing little by little and moved on to other things.
This April my interests peaked again in the game and I decided to check it out to see if most of the bugs had been taken care of. They were and the game even had the addition of vehicles (walking everywhere sucked so bad). The graphics are great, the gameplay is simple and doesn't take long getting used to. I would say the biggest thing to learn on that side of things is the multitude of ctrl + letter functions.
The Star Wars immersion is there, but not to the extent I would like it. I decided to go Rebel with my character and have met all the big names: Leia, Luke, Ackbar, Chewie, Han... etc. Once those missions are over though, your part in the GCW is sort of a moot point and pretty much deals with only doing missions to increase your rank or PvP against an Imperial.
Then there's the grinding. It takes SO MUCH xp to get from one box to the next in your skillset. So much in fact that you stop playing the game in order to find the mob with the highest XP ratio and just sit and kill them all day long. This gets tedious and boring and is why I took a little break from the game the past few weeks.
That being said the devs are putting some things into future patches. First off there is going to be a Combat rebalance. Right now if you're planning on doing any sort of PvP, you had best be a Rifleman or a Teras Kasi artist or you'll get slaughtered. So they're going to fix that and balance everything out. The next is the Galactic Civil War. This is going through a whole revamp in order to increase player immersion in the Star Wars Universe and also so that when the Rebels win a victory over the Imps something actually happens. Right now there are no consequences, so there is in fact, no point to the fighting. After that patch, the Jump to Lightspeed expansion comes out that looks absolutely incredible.
So.. to answer your question: Depends.
I would say if you really liked games like Tie Fighter and X-Wing and enjoy MMORPG's and having fun grouping with other players in a Pseudo-Star Wars universe.. pick it up.
If you enjoy soloing, action at all times, and are very strict about your beliefs in SW continuity (in SWG right now there are Super Battle Droids that are 8 feet tall and a group of Mandalorians in a bunker on Endor) then this game might piss you off.
My advice: You get a month free when you get the game, so I'd get it and give it a try. If you don't like it you can always trade it in towards another game at EB Games. If you do decide to pick it up though, hit the Starsider Server and look me up: Dalzell Axost. I'll help you get started.
