The EU had it share of good stories in it but ultimately I think it would have been better if they'd stuck to the "Parallel Universe" as Lucas called it. Establish it is its own separate thing, a what-if of sorts that uses the original films as a launch pad, that didn't have to reflect anything beyond the OT films. That would have spared them headaches with the PT or, even worse, the ST when inevitably, whether its Lucas or Disney, the films wanted to expand upon the original story.
As it was the EU got caught in a bad half-way spot where it was supposed to reflect the Film franchise yet also wanted to tell its own stories and had to trip over themselves trying to retcon things every time Lucas elaborated on almost anything.
The other alternative, if you really wanted to keep canon with the films, is I think placing the EU either far enough ahead or far enough back where it wouldn't interfere with the "present" timeline.
The pre-1999 EU actually had it baked in that they wouldn't elaborate on the prequel era, and that worked fine. Except Lucas, you know... changed his mind on some key things. He literally told Zahn that the Clone Wars happened 35 years before ANH (and presumably agreed, at least implicitly -- since he okayed the plot for the books -- that the clones were referenced as the 'baddies'). And then when he started writing the prequels, he changed things up. That can happen, but as far as "doing your best to elegantly weave things together" goes, the EU was a real masterpiece. Hundreds of authors, and still-- most things really do fit together.
There was real respect for each other (most of the time). Authors read each others' work, and elaborated on things referenced in previous stories. Just look at an absolute walking encyclopedia like Luceno, who managed feats of canon-welding not seen before or since. And when authors
didn't respect their peers (*cough*Traviss*cough*), a lot of fans were decidedly not on board with that kind of bullshit. Fans can tell when the creators love the world they're working in.
What I'm saying is: the EU was a multi-decade collaborative work of love, and it shows. That's something we need, to connect to the material. The Disney stuff feels -- at least very often -- like focus-group-tested, designed-by-committee corporate bullshit. And that just doesn't work.
Then our victory is all but complete. Give it another ten years and I think Disney Wars will be nought but a bad memory.
I hope that in less Disney will be a bad memory.
Regrettably, Disney is like the hoarding dragon of the old stories-- always greedy, always unwilling to let go of anything. They'd rather bury it in a copyright vault than let anyone else have it. But I hope that their poor decisions eventually force them to shrink as a company, and to sell off other companies they've bought up (like LucasFilm). And that someone who cares about it gets to run the show, then.
With the main actors getting on in age (and in the case of Carrie Fisher, passed away) I hold that the ideal strategy, now, would be to set up a
Star Wars Animated Universe. Base it on the old EU, iron out the most glaring wrinkles, get rid of the few cases of too obvious continuity snarl, and decline to include the really poorly received works in the adaptation. And then... go for it. There's material for countless series. From
Dawn of the Jedi to an adapted (and this time,
not truncated) version of
Legacy. Thousands of years of stories. It's all there. And you know the fans would love it.