Your friends need to catch up on their swtor info.Myself and a few friends were totally into SWTOR when it initially released .. I pretty much ditched WoW and every other game for a solid 2 months and REALLY enjoyed getting a couple of toons to 50 and experiencing the incredible stories that accompanied the classes. The rest of the game lent towards the 'Meh' side but it was still respectable.
I haven't tried it since it went F2P, but my other friends did and they uninstalled it pretty much straight away after playing. Their response was basically that sure F2P is cool because you can experience all the character stories for free, but all the restrictions just make it ridiculous. 2 Action Bars makes it impossible to have every skill you need on yours bars... 350k Credit Limit is absurd ... Basic things like Flashpoints/Operations are restricted and you have to buy passes ... 2 Character slots per realm is completely ridiculous ...
I'd say the majority of people who play it because it's F2P will either get to level ~30 or so, love it and just subscribe so they can not be restricted to hell ... Or they'll just keep carrying on with the restrictions, get to 50 and realise they can't do crap and just quit and not come back. I think the latter will be the more common response.
I think it'll be great short term revenue, but it just won't pay-off in the long run and they'll end up just getting rid of half of these absurd restrictions to keep new players coming.
Its going to be 6 bars, 6 character slots, and the 350k credit cap is extremely helpful for f2p accounts.