Well as I said, SWTOR is not for spoiled impatient players who are after constant “action”. It is a more realistic approach. I can certainly appreciate the vastness of the maps, etc. It adds to the immersion quality. Also, I think the main character story nicely blends with planet-specific side stories.
And SWTOR can be easily considered as KOTOR3 because MMO aspects can be ignored/bypassed almost entirely (I know that for the fact as I did exactly that).
I’m not interested in constant action, there is just a difference between having big open worlds that are interesting (see: The Elder Scrolls/Fallout series’, Star Wars: Galaxies, The Division, et cetera) and having a big open world with nothing in it, and TOR is definitely one of the latter. I spent countless hours in SWG’s heyday (a game that was anything but constant action if you wanted it that way and almost more fun that way) just driving my speeder around, looking for (and finding) cool secrets and neat easter eggs or hidden caves or interesting player cities or hidden homes. I also spent many hours in TOR looking for the datacrons (before there were guides for all of them) and there was objectively significantly less interesting stuff to find (apart from the datacrons themselves and the admittedly interesting mechanics to get some of them). Some of the smaller maps were fine, but all of the biggest ones (Tatooine, Hoth, those kinds) were just an unbearable bore. Even flying around empty space in SWG was more interesting to me than half the planets in TOR were. =P
Like I said, the stories (at least the ones I played) were decent enough, even the planetary stories were alright, and I don’t think anyone played the game as an MMO, and I know I never did much grouping with other players (aside from doing a few raids early on before the exodus) my issue isn’t with it being an MMO so much as it being a really half-assed MMO. I’ve played a bunch of them and TOR is right at the bottom of the list in terms of interesting and engaging mechanics. If they hadn’t been so quick to just copy/paste most of the mechanics from WoW and instead put the kind of love they put into KOTOR I and II (before half of it was cut as it was rushed into launch), they would have had potentially a good game on their hands.
You know you’ve done something wrong when you make a game for a certain genre and nobody plays it that way, so much so that you go back a few years later and do your best to change the genre. It’s a shame that so much decent and enjoyable story is locked behind so much awful game.