Before I start - disclaimer: I am not here to bash Bioware, or SWTOR, I have my copy preordered and will be playing. Just want to have a discussion about this.
Basically, from the research I have done, there are some things that worry me and I just wonder if anyone else has worries too.
1. server only PVP.
This is a great idea in theory, creating real pvp relationships with both your allies and enemies on your server. However, anyone who has sat in a WoW pvp queue for 30 minutes at a time, knows it is no fun, particularly if it stops you from doing other things. Any server imbalances with factions will compound the problem, as will low population realms. Also anyone who has tried to queue in WoW at night, will also know that often it takes 2 hours for games to pop, and that is with the huge population and cross realm matching that they have. Bioware have stated that they will be keeping a close eye on this, and will also have bolstering and same faction hutball to help alleviate this problem.
2. People ninjaing items to gear their companions.
Since you gear your companions up, this is a real possibility. We saw it with offspec ninjaing in WoW, and selfish players may try to take any item that is vaguely useful to their companions. With 4 companions to gear up you will need a fair amount of gear for them, and I imagine pretty much every item will be useful to a companion in some way. I have not seen any info on class specific rolling or 'main spec priority' being built into the game.
3. A wow-like pigeonholing of progression content.
This is my biggest fear really, that we will be forced to run the same raid every week, for months on end, then everything becomes obscelete when the new content is released. This is pretty much the main reason I quit WoW personally. I like having choices and variety when I play, with lots of content to explore, not to repeat the same thing every week for months. It is my sincere hope that we will have lots of endgame content and not 3 raid tiers in an entire expansion. I understand that rushed out content is a bad thing of course, but the long development time for this game and the 'wow-model' being considered acceptable by most people does worry me a bit. I personally think that blizzard should have had more teams working on raid content to give players more to do at endgame, and I hope SWTOR doesnt end up the same way.
4. Lack of challenging 4 man content.
To keep players interested we will need to have things to do outside of raidtimes. From what I hear we will have only 4-5 flashpoints at release. If these arent sufficiently challenging, or regularly released I fear that the pve could be confined to raidtime only, as we see in wow. Add to this that a gear progression style means that content becomes obscelete means a lot of faceroll content, or the need for constant new content to be released. I have heard nothing of any scaling being used, or different difficulty levels (for example DDO dungeons have 4 or 5 difficulties each, and there are hundreds of them).
5. Large disparity between roles and specs.
The choice to use 4 man groups, and I assume, the need to have a mandatory tank and healer, is going to cause problems. Compare this to how many people dont like to play these 'utility' roles and the vast amount of DPS specs. lets take a quick look at the numbers.
4man content: 25% tank 25% healer 50% dps
8man content: 25% tank (assuming 2) 25% healer (assuming 2) and 50% dps (assuming 4)
16man content: unsure how many tanks/healers will be used in this content.
specs (24 in total): 12.5 % tanking (3) 12.5% healing (3) 75% DPS (18)
I am suprised in the descision to go with 4 man groups if they require both a tank or healer, as a huge premium is put on these roles. I would prefer to see a system similar to DDO where group compositions are not set in stone. Tanks and healers exist in that game, but for most regular content they are not mandatory. I personally would prefer either 6 man groups or the need for only one of these roles being mandatory in a 4 man group (eg. a healer is needed to heal 3 dps, but a tank can sufficiently deal with the damage to allow for minimal healing in 4 man content)
6. 2 faction system.
A small personal preference here but when it comes to PVP, 3 factions is a far more interesting system than 2. However star wars lore (not my strong point admittadely) seems to force this though. I cant really blame Bioware for this descision I would have just like to see something a bit more innovative than the standard 2 faction systems we see in so many MMOs. Thankfully GW2 will have this in their WvWvW system so that should satisfy my desire for 3 sided PVP.
7. PVP specific gear. or gear driven content in particular.
Another personal gripe of mine, is the gear = win system. It remains to be seen how this will play out in SWTOR. Many factors will impact this: will players need PVP gear to compete; will this gear take a long time to aquire; and will skill or gear be the deciding factor in fights. There is nothing worse that wanting to pvp but thinking you will have to get owned for 2 weeks just to get gear. Again GW2 should satisfy my preferences here, but I am worried about this in SWTOR.
I would like to hear if you have any opinions on any of my points, or have worries of your own.