Good on you, I played EVE as a thief mostly - I stole from the Space Unicorn Heretics, and let's leave it at that, those who understand can understand.
I personally get bored by bang bang and pew pew, sure, I understand the need for it, but I don't actually go after it.
Problem is, SWG was not a single-shard game. It was sandbox at its finest (NGE was cancer, let's move on), but it was about an already existing universe, not building one up from scratch.
In DU, people will eventually get to the point of being the Empire, shit, EVE Online had its version of the Empire in the form of the Goons and Imperium. And the people who fought against them was Pandemic Legion - amongst many many others which is not the point of discussion - and Pandemic Legion is not what you'd call "lawful neutral", they are the guys who troll people for sports, hotdrop Titans to blow up one silly little Orca mining barge and people who wil ltell you "good fight" after swarming you with 500 ships... on your hauler out of all things. Amongst PL's temporary allies, Darkness, led by the guy who betrayed the Coalition that was fighting the Imperium in an older war. Check up the story of World War Bee to see what went down, someone on Youtube has a video about it probably.
Yes, go figure, video games are art and art should immitate real life. And in the real world, there's no "good and bad", there's a lot of culture behind two people and those cultures eventually come to a strife.
What is the motivating factor in DU? As NQ stated "rebuilding civilisation" and "player culture". You CAN be the bartender on a bar in-game and just play the game as a social platform. I know people who do far less intrigueing jobs in EVE... like mentoring newbros in a division.
Combat is just ONE part of the game, nobody said it IS the game.
