To the OP, I'm not really sure why there's this seemingly deep rooted hate for the game. Personally, despite a few bugs here and there (none that I would classify as "game-breaking"), I think the game is excellent. I've played quite a few mmo's now, and I've found things to enjoy in quite a few of them.
City of Heroes had me hooked for a couple years, and there's a game that (for a long time) had no crafting at all, and only one raid to speak of with absolutely zero PVP until Villains launched much later.
Played the devil that is WoW, had a lot of fun with it as well, but I don't really see it doing anything really any better then anyone else, I think some people just can't let go of years worth of work on their characters there to move on to anything else.
Guild Wars, excellent game, and one that I still go back to every now and again for fun...already pre-ordered GW2 and I'm expecting that I'll spend quite a few hours there after launch.
Played EQ1, EQ2. EVE Online, The Matrix Online, Auto Assault, Rift, Fallen Earth and a few others, but never to the point of maxing every option out.
All that said, I'll still maintain my sub in SWTOR for quite a long time yet. The funny thing about a lot of the negative posts, is they like to point at other games and say they have this, that or the other thing, the most ardent among them being fans of WoW, not a big surprise, it's one of the largest MMO's out there, and the largest P2P if I'm not mistaken.
Story Lines: Most people don't complain about it, but some have. I thought SWTOR did a great job of making me feel something (love or hate) for the characters I not only created, but that I'm saddled with on my ship, or stuck working for. Sure, the planet quests get tired after awhile, but what mmo doesn't when you play multiple characters. Using WoW as the benchmark, are they any different? I honestly can't remember the storyline because after going through it the first couple times, I never bothered to read the quests anymore since it was always the same thing.
Linear: It's a story based MMO, so no, you can't hop right to Corellia and go crazy. Unfortunately, just about every MMO I've played has been linear. CoH you started in Galaxy City or Atlas park, next stop was Steel Canyon, next stop Talos Islan or Independance Park...WoW was the same thing. When you finished one zone, you went to the next, and the next, and the next until you reach cap. Sure, the world gives the appearance that it isn't linear, but it's a facade. As far as linear in the sense of starting at this door, and the objective is at the end...well that's mostly do to their being indoor instances...which, if I'm not mistaken, most MMO's don't do, they leave you outside in the cold (so to speak) to quest.
Instances: Too many of them...take a look at Guild Wars, entirely instanced...but still fun.
End Game Content: Really...what does any major mmo make you do at the end game. Grind dailies to gear up so that you can do a harder dungeon to get more gear so that you can gear up to do raids. And then....? There's no magical gameplay at the end, you just have the best gear and...oh, max out crafting for the sake of maxing out crafting....yeah, fun lol Yes, we do that here as well, but it's not anything any other MMO doesn't already make you do, it's the status quo, and SWTOR does it pretty well. Sure, they could use more raids at the end, who couldn't, and they'll come, in time.
I could go on, but I think this is already long enough. TL;DR People will always find a reason to hate because it's missing a feature that's important to them...unfortunately you can't please everyone all at once. Bugs seems to be the biggest issue, but I'm on the camp about patience for that since it takes time to find, code, test and release. It's not an overnight process.
Don't worry about the hate, just play the game and have fun!