SO, i've been following this game with a lot of interest. Because Bioware rocks. So hopefully, there won't be much sidetracking in this thread.
It's supposed to be released in October '10 and will be Bioware's first MMO. A while back, EA who owns Bioware and Mythic (responsible for Warhammer Online), cut down on Mythic and so the head of Bioware now also is in charge of the left-overs from that project. This means that there are at least some people on the Bioware team who know how to run an MMO and though WO wasn't a great success, it did have it's good points.
I think the most interesting thing about The Old Republic is that they intend to introduce Companions much like Guild Wars. You'll be able to select different companions, depending on your class and whether you're with the empire or the republic, who can fulfill different roles such as healing, dps and tanking. Whether this will work in instances/raids, and whether the AI is competent enough to fulfill these roles at least as good as an average party member, remains to be seen.
The potential though, is that people may be more inclined to play a spec that they want to play without being overly concerned about class composition at endgame. I know Dragon Age had an incredible AI system where you could program a lot of functions into the AI so they knew exactly when to use an ability and if even a dumbed down version of that macro system was used to control companions, you'd have AI better than most pugs.
The fact you can apparently Romance/Piss Off these companions makes them more than just mindless AI as well. It really adds to the immersion aspect of the game as the game apparently will boast different stories depending on what class you are playing, as well as what spec and whether you intend to do things in a good or bad way. That is to say, you can metaphorically rescue kittens as a sith or kill puppies as a jedi.
This in itself is something that's pretty interesting because I found WoW to be lacking in this department. The Horde is the horde, and the Alliance is the Alliance. You can mold most quests into a stereotype depending on what race you're doing quests for (TAURENS CARE ABOUT NATURE BRAH). The fact that a person can belong to the Republic and still be a bit of a bastard adds an element of realism that I can appreciate.
The biggest problem that the game seems to currently have is that each faction currently has four classes, unique to their faction. Future PVP balance issues might occur, because even though each side has rough equivalents on the other side (Sith Inquisitor - Jedi Consular, Sith Warrior - Jedi Knight), they still have different abilities. I'm not as worried about PVE because at worst, it will just be another Horde vs Alliance progression problem (you know... Because of that huge Tauren health pool advantage, eh Valdr?).
We'll see how things progress over the next year. After being let down by Aion, by silly grind-encouraged design, this might actually get me interested in MMO's again.
Links:
http://darthhater.com/2009/12/03/december-3rd-information-extravaganza/http://www.swtor.com/news