Originally Posted by
Carabas
A good 90% of it was as much in continuity then as it is now though: not.
The EU was tolerated as long as it didn't deal with stuff Lucas was interested in. Once Lucas became interested in something the EU had done, like say Mandalorians, then huge parts of the EU were gone, just like that.
If Lucas would have been interested in doing an Episode VII, the entire EU Skywalker soap opera from the Thrawn trilogy on would have been gone.
They had these ridiculous levels of canonicity back then, and the only level that really counted for anything was G-Canon, as in just the movies, basically.
Now there is one, unified canon (with some exceptions like the Bioware stuff), and the Lucasfilm Storygroup seem dedicated to bringing back as much characters and concepts from the old EU back as possible.