Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview

While attending GamesCom last week, the Wikia-loving Ausir conducted an interview with BioWare Austin's Daniel Erickson, quizzing the Star Wars: The Old Republic lead writer about Knights of the Old Republic references, whether companions are customizable, how many more planets we can expect announcements for, and more.
How can The Old Republic appeal to someone who is not that much of a MMORPG fan, but is a fan of Star Wars or the KotOR games?

The one thing I've been saying all the time, and the reason why I'm here is if you're a KotOR fan, you are going to love this game, I can guarantee it. It's as much KotOR as you could ever want, and it never ends, and you can keep your character going on forever. Every one of our character stories has all of the choice, all of the amazing storyline, anything that you'd want in a KotOR sequel, expect that there are 8 of them and they're all different.

...

Heaven's Agent: Will we have some means of choosing our character's appearance, regardless of the equipment we wear?

An amazing amount, actually. You can choose your face features, tattoos, scars, which look amazing in the game, there's some stuff that comes only with very specific character types as well. The Sith Inquisitor has a choice of different slave brands. And with different species, genders and body types, you can have a pretty wide range of characters. One of the things we didn't want to do was start your character, walk out the door, and then see yourself.