I never played SWG, but I am constantly hearing about how awesome it was. In fact I hardly hear an unkind word about it. And this always leaves me wondering: why was it shut down?
I recently picked up SWTOR as I was looking for something to occupy me while I wait for EverQuest Next: Landmark. I think I bought a subscription to SWTOR within 2 days of starting? Mostly to unlock the races, as I like racial variety.
Anyway, it became obvious early on in SWTOR that I was playing WoW with a Star Wars skin. Nonetheless, I really like the way the game looks, and I'm still really impressed with the dialogues (something you concede is done well.) I also enjoy being able to send my companion away on mission - it's kind of cool on its own, and I don't want an NPC following me around anyway.
All of that said, I can't help but be continually surprised at the level at which they simply copied systems from another game wholesale. I mean, there's clones and then there's clones. I don't know if I've ever seen it done so blatantly.
One other point: Just because SWTOR has more subscribers than SWG had doesn't mean themeparks are necessarily more successful than sandboxes. Generalizing in that way is quite the leap in logic. This genre as a whole is still quite young, and there have been precious few quality sandbox options. Just because the one breakout hit is themepark, and that's what most people are familiar with right now, doesn't mean sandbox can't grow in popularity.