If this game was not Star Wars would you still play?

No.
Badly implated MMO features and ideas. Really bad features. I am an MMO fan and if you look past Star Wars brand, an ok story and voice over, then you are left with, well, not a good MMO.
To many bounty hunter bugs in the game. For crying out load. How many times must one report the bugs since beta, and still no fixe on them.
Dead zones. You dont see ayone when you are out playing. You dont feel like you are out in the zones. no ambient "feelings".

can add a ton more, but Ill just stick with 3.

Try check around a bit before giving an aswer like that. You have people, like me, who sits on good machines and good connection, and still get fps issues etc etc. It does not anything to do with how good your machine is.

I wonder why EA/BW removed high settings on the graphical settings, and renamed medium to high. Try guess why they did that. They did not "gray" out the high settings for fixing for to activat it later. They removed it all to gether. They have just low and "new high". What does that tell you.
And now they are going to implant "extra low" settings for thouse with "really bad machines, like mine (see below)". Guess what will happen, when that comes into play. They will probably rename "low" to medium, and the new extra low settings to low.

If it wasn't Star Wars I'd probably be more forgiving for its flaws and maybe, in a weird way like it more.

Star Wars is very much an icon in our society. Its a tremendous IP. And with Bioware given the extreme privaledge of making a MMO based on it, we thought this was a grand slam even before it launched. Nothing less than near perfection was going to satisfy us.

So if it wasn't Star Wars I'd probably like it more.

To be honest, this game isn't even really Star Wars insofar as an outsider is concerned. You're trying to say that the game attempts to pander to otherwise uninformed original trilogy fans who would play it solely because of their fandom of said trilogy, but this era has much different feel to it which, in my opinion, is not helped very much by one's affection for the original trilogy.

The Old Republic feels more like an elves-and-dragons fantasy world, and a the causal original trilogy fan, without any external knowledge of BioWare, KOTOR, or, other extended universe works has little outside of lightsabers and the force to relate to.

Honestly, I dont know. Game started out below average (once the "OMG Bioware/KotOR/SW MMO" hype died down) but the devs seems to be heading in the right direction for the most part.

Id be more inclined to buy TERA though but even thats not 100%.

Probably would've never heard of it until it's release and then it would probably be rated M because there would be added disgusting crud people seem to like and I wouldn't even think about buying it due to the M label

Nope i wouldn't. I play this game as part of a duo with my wife (who is a starwars freak) and because the storyplay is great. I play everquest 1 for the grouping experience and anarchy online because it still has a lot of depth today games never will have. This game is good but would be just a science fiction game without starwars and the stories.

Isn't this like asking, 'if water wasn't wet, would you still use it to shower?'

No. If it was something else I would have given it something like six months to work out bugs and such before trying it. Also, if it was something else I never would have convinced my sister to try it so I wouldn't have a playing partner.

On the other hand, yes. The story is so much better presented and easier to follow than in other mmos that I probably would have tried it eventually and been hooked.

Im not playing it (with or without it is being Star Wars).

(NO) probably i would try but then unsub in the end of the first month.