TOR was very wow clone, with a semi-neat levelling experience due to the class stories. If you took wow of say, 5 years ago and slapped a Star Wars skin on it, that's TOR. The game itself wasn't completely awful to play with that in mind, there just wasn't much reason to keep playing it. And of course, wow had improved a lot in the interim which is the real issue with these 'me too!' clones. You're aiming at a moving target, if you try to actually make your own style of game you don't have to worry about that part as much.
I honestly feel wow as it stands, for most classes, is about as deep as you can get hotkey based combat to be, There's not a lot of room to grow without a vastly different sort of combat. TES looks like it's different on the surface and more 'action-y' but the reality is you're just left with hotkeys, and a tacked on left click spam auto attack and right click block which is not all that exciting. Oh, and click both to interrupt the interruptable casts! That's no more engaging than Guild Wars or Secret World combat, but those games have other things going for them at least.
The main reason most hotkey based games feel shitty when it comes to combat mechanics is that they tend to lack depth. It took wow YEARS to get there, wow in vanilla was as rote as you could get, which was fine cause it was a new type of game for the time but now? it doesn't fly to have your game be so similar. You need complex resource systems, varied resource systems with different classes so that everyone can find one they like, and reasons to have decisionmaking during your combat. The days of 'hit these buttons on cooldown in this priority' have long since sailed in wow and games that ape that (TOR did for instance) just end up feeling old. There needs to be room to grow as a player and a reasonably high skill cap, which most of these games miss the mark on. A really really good wow player is VASTLY better at their class than the average. If I can memorize a basic rotation and perform 99% of optimally with little effort, your game is too simplistic, straight up.
