I quit when GW2 came out. I love that game, responsive combat and love the dungeons, the art, heck love everything about it except....the stories. The personal story in GW2 sucks, the voice acting is terrible, the writing is terrible, and I'm a guild leader for GW2. I decided to come back to SWTOR for the story. I subscribed originally in January. Just came back two days ago. I'm back for the stories. There is a lot about this game that could be better, they could take a lot from GW2 but the stories are awesome. You feel like you're in the story the minute you start playing. I resubbed after playing F2P for 10 minutes, lol. It is my secondary mmo, but when I'm playing alone, I'll duck in and work on my knight's story.
About the store, I have no problem with them having a store but I don't have the need to have. Not to mention, in GW2, it is a pain to make gold especially when you have 8 characters. In SWTOR, my level 9 already has over 4K credits and isn't even off Tython. So there are good and bad things about each game and you need to weigh it out. For me, they are both worth my time for different reasons.