The one thing that will keep SW:TOR from being a WoW killer is this:

Not all of us are Star Wars junkies, and there's a lot of people like me, who find Star Wars fanbois so annoying, we won't go anywhere near a Star Wars title.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movies, but the game is going to be crammed with uberfans, and I really want nothing to do with that crowd.

It's the same for Star Trek. The shows were enjoyable, the movies fun, but I don't want to be immersed in that world and deal with the Trekkies and Trekkers.

WoW works because it's easy lore to get into, there's no pre-existing group of people like the Star Wars and Star Trek camp to deal with (and even tho WoW has grown it's own equivelants, they're not nearly as established or annoying), and the lore and world of WoW is a mix of ALL genres, with in-jokes and campiness and seriousness.

SW:TOR is going to be a brutal game for non-fanbois to play - servers will be packed with endless arguments over lore, over who's better, Han or Luke, and massive nerd rage if they don't get every little detail exactly perfect. I just have zero interest in that community, and that community already has far too much invested personally to be open and welcome to newbies.

The only fantasy world that could compete with WoW right now and do as well as or overtake WoW is Harry Potter's universe. It has a built-in fan base that is enormous and is international, it's a fairly easy world to enter, and it's got enough humor and seriousness to satisfy everyone - as long as they did'nt make it a day care center for 6-12 year olds. Wow is fairly similar to Harry Potter in many respects, in terms of characters, humor, accessablity to a wide age group, and just enough dark humor and content to keep the hardcore interested.

A new IP would have to be that good to compete - and not be based on an insular and very newb hostile crowd like Star Wars, or any of the Nerd Canon titles. Star Wars is a beacon of light for a very specific and small community of people, and the average person on the street has already been exposed to that community and feels uncomfortable joining it - the Star Wars crowd has been the butt of jokes and ridicule for decades now.

Besides, the way to beat Wow is to ignore Wow. Who says that anyone needs to beat WoW? There's plenty of people out there who've never played an MMO, and there's plenty of room for a new title to build it's own playerbase without having to steal from WoW. Too many of the games are based on the same tired ideas, and few of them have the right mix to appeal to a broad appeal of people who aren't obsessed with a specific movie or set of books.

The next game that comes close to WoW will do what WoW did, and make it's own rules, and carve it's own way in the wilderness, and throw away the rule book.

I don't see a whole lot of that in the current crop of publishers. *shrug*. Dunno. We'll see.