I remember back in the early days when WoW first came out for me it wasn't exactly a world beater of a game in it's first year but it just took off with new features and they've made it the best MMO game around now for me and nothing ever seems to dethrone it. Saying that I, even in it's first year not many MMO's could compete with it even then. It was the major player in the genre at the time and has thrived on that basis, better looking MMO's have come out and with similar features but no-one seems to match it as in my opinion people have invested so much time and money in WoW over the years it's hard to abandon it (from my point of view I've tried many times but still go back and will again when MoP comes out).
Reading some of the literature on the subject of MMO's most of the 'experts' from universities agree that a F2P model is the only way to go at the moment, so people can maintain multiple MMO's and dip into the ones that catch their interest. I'm certainly unsure of the benefit but at least with a Star Wars franchise there is a huge potential player base out there, they've just got to develop it further and hopefully F2P helps them achieve it's longevity.
I hope you do continue to develop the bot in addition to making updates for patches as I love the work of the team, personally I'd prefer the bugs to be ironed out in the questing, combat and general play rather than a space bot as I like the idea of the lazy raider style play with the gathering options and questing to level alts. However since I don't use botting as an income I may be in the minority in my opinion all I want is to manage to play and maintain a life away from the game, which without bots I would find extremely hard personally as I invest far too much time in games.