Finally, they're admitting it :
< In the context of new development methods adopted within the past year by the studio responsible for Star Wars Galaxies, which a year ago saw several drastic changes to the game-world's overall experience, SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes."
"I would have done it a lot differently, and I think that's what's really been driving a lot of this," said Blakely, SOE's vice president of development, regarding the SWG changes known collectively as the New Game Enhancements, or NGE. Those changes, rolled out shortly after the previous year's AGC, resulted in several departures of development employees, and a significant portion of the customer population – by some estimates cutting it in half.
[...]
Ultimately, Blakely noted, "you're making the game for your audience, not for yourself." Developers need to have a command of how the game works, but the players are the consumers. The more people on the team who understand that, Fiala said, the greater chance the entire team can be leveraged for the sake of reaching the target market.
[...]
Having this grasp, Fiala said, can be useful to sometimes deflect some "good" ideas that come from upper management that might not mesh with the established purpose of the game. >
source : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10830
Now, all that LucasArts has to do is fire the SWG Excutive Producers, end their contract with SOE, get a new one with Blizzard or NCSoft, and release SWG2 !!! :p