SWTOR will compete with WoW ? Yes according to BioWare who may be slightly bias

I don't think there is a chance in hell that SWTOR will surpass WoW in subscribers, but it will be successful because of the Star Wars franchise. 

BioWare is very confident in it's product:  (quotes from BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka)

"The results from consumer testing are incredible, a fantastic response - really high net promoter scores, extremely high desire to subscribe from the player base, and in fact it increases over time,"  "The higher the level they get in the game, the more they want to play and the more they want to tell their friends."

 "World of Warcraft has helped to grow the audience for us and as a seven year MMO now, we're launching some really innovative differentiating features that I think we'll have an opportunity to capitalize on," he said. "I have tremendous respect for the folks at Blizzard, but I think we're building a product that will more than compete."

I see their point of WoW making MMO's more recognizable to the masses, but it seems they are a little too confident.  Maybe they have an amazing marketing scheme whipped up because I don't think they are relying solely on gameplay and content to draw in subscribers.

Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.  The confidence from those quotes does make me want to try, but I'll wait until the user feedback sounds that confident until I get excited about it.

quotes pulled from (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Star-Wars-MMOG-World-of-Warcraft-The-Old-Republic-Ray-Muzyka,12915.html)