I'm mostly concerned about questing. Obviously it won't be like Skyrim where you can go wherever you want and the game levels with you. So...my concern is they pull a TOR and the game ends up being another mmo theme park ride. :/
Your concerns aren't unwarranted, but I will say the game is far more open than TOR.
I understand that they couldn't just have the same ES game engine, because in order to accommodate the social aspect of the game, you have to have certain players of certain levels in the same area.
While this has certain aspects of TOR in the gameplay, I will give the devs credit for trying to learn from the mistakes of TOR.
It's interesting the way some of these games develop. I was in the beta for WoW and when that came out, while Blizzard had a track record of great RTS games, when they made WoW, you could see that they looked at everything hat worked (or didn't work) in games like Ultima Online, Everquest, and Dark Age of Camelot, but they also drew from some great first person action RPG's that were out of the time.
I can see where ESO is trying to draw from other games in the genre, but it's also trying to be very original and ground breaking. Again I would tell you some of the things where I think they are missing the mark, but to do so would be violating the NDA.
But let me just say, that I think the MMO culture has completely changed. When WoW came out, monthy subscriptions were standard fair. Now people are expecting free to play, and that has come at the price of "in game puchases" for better or worse.
The only MMO out on the market that has grown in membership in the past year was Eve online. Everyone else, including WoW has lost membership. So the big question, more than if this game will be successful, is 'can it be successful enough to overcome the declining interest in MMO games?'
I can't afford it 
. Guess I'll be playing Skyrim over and over...
