I agree it could have been much better as a game. The story was well done and played the Star Wars theme nicely, with BioWare brand dialogue as a bonus. The combat system was a bit too basic, though. PvP and PvE got stale relatively fast and the game never really felt like a dungeon crawler, so R.I.P. dungeon and raid communities. A relatively low cap on progression also took away players' drive to keep grinding. Those are also the reasons I no longer play.
Still, I did enjoy the game immensely while I was playing it. Sometimes you just need to wack things with a lightsaber.
WoW is unarguably still pretty popular. BDO lost a lot of steam because it was grindy. It is a gorgeous game but the expectations of the player turned out to be very high. Guild Wars 2 failed to deliver fresh new content fast enough and is dying. I think Final Fantasy is probably one of if not the most played MMO currently.
Segway: are you following 
Lost Ark?