It's all in an effort to keep Star Wars feeling "real" and not making it escapism. Every single one of those deaths (well, actually, the more recent ones starting in Vector Prime) was a way to take the "These characters are safe" aspect away. It is one of the only reasons why I set the EU as an extremely low priority on my reading list. If I want realism, I'll watch the evening news. When I read Star Wars (or any other Sci-Fi for that matter) I want to escape. I want to go to a fantastical world where the characters I love win in the end and survive. I don't want to worry whether or not a character I've loved for years is going to suddenly bite it when I turn the page.

"Who's going to die next?" is what the EU has become. For that, I shun it.