I've been playing MMOs since 2001. Ive beta tested Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest 2, EVE, World of Warcraft, Conan, Lineage 2, and several smaller titles. Even messed around as a Game Master for EVE and EverQuest 2. Worked on Staff for
Mmorpg.com too.
I always have the same advice no matter which game it is:
I never play a game until at least 3 months into it. Saves me a lot of headaches from bug issues, technical difficulties, and usually a MMO price tends to go down 10 dollars in the first 3 or 6 months (WoW was one of the only MMOs Ive seen where the price stayed the same for almost 2 years).
Right now, I'm in a pretty good guild in WoW. It's called Taint and it's the 3rd largest guild in the game (which has like 8 million players). Its a LGBT and LGBT allie guild and despite it's size, we all are pretty close. We've been featured in a few magazines and we have a good rapport with Blizzard.
I know Taint is going to open a guild in SW:TOR but I think they are going to wait 3 months too to see how things pan out.