The 100 million subscribers who've paid 10 billion in revenue over the long life of WoW kind of guarantee that EA will always be tempted to try to replicate that. A billion dollars isn't what it used to be, but it's still tempting.
There were a few MMOs with the potential to become better than WoW but the developers and publishers believed they had to copy WoW instead of being original. You can see the same trend in the entire industry and even with movies. They are far more likely to make a sequel to a popular game/movie than try something new.
After a while all games are similiar. And that means they don't sell as well as they could.
Blizzard analyzed lots of games and ruthlessly copied the best parts of them together. Then they dressed it up in bright colors and made it accessible for casual gamers. One of the main factor for their success isn't the game itself, it was the timing. It was ~10 years ago when DSL became available for most households, which kickstarted online gaming. Before that the community was rather small, I met the same people in every MMO (beta) I played. For all MMOs prior to WoW 100k subscribers meant they were very successful.
SW:TOR is making more money today than it was when it still had 1 million subscribers. That's because of their free-to-play model, which as we all know isn't really free. They may have 1+ million logins each month but only half of those have a subscription, the others are milked through micro transactions.
I saw it myself when I played SOE's DCUO. I had a subscription, most other people in my league used micro transactions. They all paid more than I did.
The companies are taking advantage of human weakness. Free-to-play to lure them in, then small payments here and there... but when you add it all up, they robbed you blind. It's just that most people don't think longterm or can resist cheap offers ("It's only a buck!").
EA may have failed with SW:TOR, but financially it was a success. Eventually. But if you look at all the wasted potential, then it's very, very sad.
At this point I could copy&paste my final beta report from SW:TOR but I doubt anyone would read that wall of text. ^^
I still have some hope left that at some point someone will realize what we gamers were saying for years is right... and change how things work at the moment. But as long as they can make money with mediocre games and by ripping off the players, we will not get anything better.
(The only exception that comes to mind is the Witcher franchise. Those guys really care about the gamers, are very fair and try their best to deliver quality. Still, not an MMO.)
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