MMOs that I've played that have faltered off, will SWTOR make the same mistakes?

I remember my first days of playing MMORPGs, I was thirteen years old and there was basically one choice out there at the time for an online game other than MUDs, The Realm Online by Sierra.  This was a turn based 2d game, but it was an amazing experience and I’ve been hooked on MMOs ever since.  The Realm lacked the impressive graphics as in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it more than made up for it in an impressive Player vs Player combat system and awesome community.  Console games just couldn’t keep my interest anymore after experiencing the competitiveness of playing with others around the country and world that MMOs offered.  

I played The Realm in version 2.x up to 3.x.  It made a crucial mistake and changed it’s combat system and alienated a lot of the player base.  I remember feeling betrayed, spending all this time leveling up to 1000 only to be let down by the new combat system that basically made every fight a stalemate and just not as fun.  To this day I still miss that community, it still exists as the longest running MMO to date.  It’s tempting to fire up a new account to see how things have changed; I wish I could remember my old logins & passwords.

After a quick stint in Ultima Online I started to play Dark Age of Camelot with some friends I had made from The Realm.  At first I wasn’t interested in DAOC, but I soon found a character I liked, the nightshade, and ran with it.  I ended up playing this game for several years leveling up all kinds of classes on every realm.  DAOC offers a very interesting 3 realm system (Midgard, Albion, Hibernia), that made for awesome PvP.  It had all open world PvP, no instanced garbage like WoW.  It’s end game was so great for a while, but Mythic just as Sierra did and made an expansion called Trials of Atlantis that changed the way PvP was played and made it a lot of extra grind at the end to be able to compete.

After DAOC I’ve yet to get into an MMO as I feel they all end up making some patch that ruins the game that you’ve come accustomed to for the first year or two you’ve played it (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies).  Will SWTOR make these same mistakes?  Will it even be fun in the beginning, not just fun because it’s something new and shiny, but contains substance and playability?  Hurry up open beta, we all want these questions answered.