Great game, no MMORPG is like this.
When I started playing WOW I loved how you didn't need a group to do a lot of stuff. The down side was that the story was rather week. There were no cut scenes, epic music, or ongoing story line. All WOW was was doing quest after quest and all it had was reading a box of text from the quest giver. In FFXI there was dialogue lines with the NPC's in the cut scenes and they addressed your character by name it it gave your character a sense of development and uniqueness. With WOW you didn't really have that. With all the other WOW clones it was the same. Rift, DC Universe, etc while good games it was the same more or less. Go to an NPC, read a box of text, accept quest, do quest, read another box of text. There would usually be a story but it would be so out there it didn't keep you interested. With the Old Republic that is not the case.
You have probably heard that this game is a WOW clone. While this game does play like WOW at times, it is not a WOW clone. The most notable thing is the story. WOW and all its clones out there have its story play out the same way. The most notable difference is that your character actually talks, not like in WOW with a line or 2, actually talks. The NPC's actually talk. The cut scenes play out like Mass Effect1,2, and Dragon Age 2. An NPC talks, you select a response, and your character responds. With your character talking and developing a sense of light and dark your character actually feels similar to Commander Shepard or Hawke. Also the story stays on track from what I have seen so far. You can do optional quests if you want but the games always keep you going with the main story. You can go do the next main quest or choose to do a side quest, help other players, do dungeons, or just goof off. It has the feel of a traditional Bioware game but as an MMORPG.
Music wise as you can guess its great because its Star Wars. The game has all the Star Wars music you have gotten to love. Whats better is that hearing the epic Star Wars music while playing as your own custom character makes the game all the more better.
The graphics aren't anything too fancy but that isn't an issue. The worlds and character models look great. I'm still on the starting planet, but considering there are multiple planets, there is much to explore.
As for the player base everyone seems nice so far. I had no trouble getting someone to help me and when I joined a party the guy in charge got 3 other people to join easily.
The combat is fun but nothing special. You use the right mouse button to attack and your hot keys to do special attacks. With all the different moves you can learn fighting enemies does not get old and with the game being partly story driven you spend some time watching cut scenes so unlike WOW you are not just constantly fighting all the time.
Overall this is a great game. If you want to play mostly by yourself you can do that, if you want to play with others all the time you can also do that. The fact that you can play a lot by yourself is not a bad thing. All the bad stuff you have heard about this game is either from WOW fanboys wanting the game to fail or people who wanted something different. If you still unsure if you will like this game and there no way to download the game for free for 7 days or so like WOW does then go ahead and buy it anyway. Even if you don't end up liking the game you will get enough out of your free 30 days with the game to make your $60 purchase feel worth it.