A little History:
When the game started back in 2003 JEdi was not a profession at all. Devs stated that they were not even going to place that profession in the game (at that time the game had 32 professions). In Dec of 2003 devs hinted that the Jedi was a secret 33rd profession and you had to go through a series of guessing games to find out how to become a jedi. They placed an item in the game called a Holocron which basically told you which professions you must be first in order to "unlock" jedi. The whole servers went into a grind fest leveling profession after profession to unlock jedi. Some people unlocked after doing 5 professions and some had to do 32 to unlock jedi. Once ya unlocked Jedi it was a hard road to lvl up cause the experience points were totally different (it was purposely made hard).
In Summer of 2004 the devs created a new way of becoming a Jedi, basically you had to do a series of quest. Once done you can enter a secret village located on the planet Dathomir called "The Village". There in total seclusion you can lvl up in your force skills but again the process was long and very very hard. It was taking players months to basically become a jedi, then once a jedi it took months to lvl up to a master. To futher supress the jedi, if you used your jedi powers in public, your character would end up in bounty hunter terminals where player Bounty Hunters could take your mission and hunt you down.
In November of 2005 the devs completely changed the game. They removed 23 of the 32 professions from the game and made 9 professions total: Bounty Hunter, Trader (crafter), Enterainer, Smuggler, Officer, Spy, Commando, Medic, and Jedi. So instead of spending months and months trying to become a jedi, the devs totally, literally, re-wrote the ENTIRE game in favor of what they called New Game Enhancements (you'll see it referred to as the NGE in many post and websites). So basically Jedi was made a starter profession. No months of mindless grinding and frustrations. The profession was made like every other in the game and lvl'ed the same way.
As for Dark side and Light, in the Pre-NGE system you could basically choose if you wanted to become a Jedi Knight or a Dark Jedi, in the Post-NGE system they allow you, once you've mastered Jedi, to learn Light and Dark abilities as part of a system they called the Expertise System. Basically you being light and dark is up to what post-master jedi skills you choose to learn. Hope that answered your question.
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