Personal or Vague? The Single Player MMO Experience

It's almost an oxymoron: MMORPG.  A genre defined by the social aspect of Massively Multiplayer, but also the personal aspect of Role-Playing. You want to be your own, make your own story, feel like you own something. But you also want to play with a bunch of people. And while, yes, interactions with others will further this experience, you have to remember that by accepting to play with others you are sharing you story with them.
Then we have SWTOR.
We enjoy a personal story, develop our own decisions and defend our own choices. Or we just hit the space bar and press random numbers unless they have Light/Dark side choices. Then we may or may not make calculated decisions. Or flip a coin, like my boyfriend sometimes does. This is the SWTOR MMORPG experience.
I find it really difficult to know I am sharing this experience with everyone out there. How do you create a personal one when everyone is doing the same thing. Everyone is the leader of the most prestigious trooper group, Havoc Squad, or the Barens'thor (apologies for the butchery of that spelling) of the Jedi, a position not given out for years. We are all the Emperor's Wrath or Cipher Nine. We are all special.
We all create (albeit pre-plotted) relationships with certain NPCs, and some of these we romance and even marry. Yet the reality is, that we share these with everyone else. Not only am I married to Kira Corsen, but so is my guildie, that person over there I ran by, and my brother.
Perhaps I'm being a tad possessive. But hey, this is "my" story after all. Shouldn't I be. Like my druid. I am extremely possessive of MY druid. I would never give away my account, even if you paid me a bajillion dollars, because it is MY druid (...if it was a bajillion dollars I might cave though). My boyfriend doesn't even play MY druid. He runs stuff on my Sage plenty of times, but MY druid is MY druid. MINE! (mine! mine! mine!)
But that's the difference between SWTOR/Bioware storytelling and other MMO's I've played.
In WoW, we are all the "adventurers," who rise above the oh so powerful NPCs and slay internet dragons. Sure we're all "Destroyer's End" or "Bane of the Fallen King," but we aren't really given ownership of those stories. In canon, a "group of adventurers" take them out. Vague, slightly anonymous.
In SWTOR, it's a different story. A single person is singled out and does a single feat. They are given a singular title, given singular praise, and the illusion that they are in fact, a singular hero. But the reality is, that everyone around you is also enjoying this singular story. And while that is the magic of Bioware and their storytelling, I can't help but wonder if this reason explains my inability to become attached to my characters.
Don't get me wrong. The storylines in SWTOR are awesome. It's probably the reason I'm still playing. At this moment, I am completely engulfed in the Sith Warrior storyline and it's NPCs, Vette and Malavai Quinn (how do I love thee? let me count the ways). And I hope to eventually try out the Imperial Agent and maybe finish the Sith Inquisitor storyline. But the reality is that all these enjoyments are far from the MMO enjoyments I usually experience. Dungeons, raiding, group play. PvP even. I don't do these things and I usually don't want to. I've started to look at SWTOR as a single player RPG more so than an MMO. And while, in the short end, that is a good thing, in the long run, it's a bad thing. After I finish the storylines, I'll probably quit until new content rears its head. Then I'll take a month or so to try it out before I leave again. Such a strange relationship this will be.  
A singular experience is important in many cases for any MMO. It's what keeps us coming back for more. We become attached to our characters, create ownership and possession of them, and want to continue our stories as them. Whether we fulfill this through gearing, gaining achievements, completing quests or raids is entirely up to us. But that personal experience is eclipsed by the pre-plotted out storyline that we all partake in. In its attempts to make it as personal as possible, SWTOR has at the same time, created a small box that I wish to live in as my own, without the outside interferences of knowing that I am, after all, not that special. 

SWTOR: a new adventure

I've always been a notorious altoholic. Partially from some form of ADD I'm sure. I usually will still always have a main, but I do have "flavor of the week" syndrome as well. Not surprisingly, it takes me a while to find a class I like, but once I find one, I'm hooked. Took me a year to finally hit my stride as a druid (my first toon was a paladin) in WoW; I started as a Cleric but ended up a Mage in Rift. And now, in Swtor, I went from Sage to Commando, back to Sage. I never really know what I'll like, but there are some criteria that I usually consider part of my checklist.

-Hybrid: can they dps and do some form of healing. Usually, I go for a hybrid healing class, a criteria I picked up after falling in love with healing on my druid and subsequent alts in WoW. In an interesting deviation, I picked up Mage in Rift, mainly because I loved Chloromancer, the only healing tree the mage has. I did start a Cleric shortly after but left Rift before I got very far. Hybrid was what I was looking to be when I started Swtor, and because healing was always my first choice, Sage/Sorcerer seemed like the way to go. I wasn't too happy with the healing, which felt like a hybrid disc priest/shaman (I say shaman because one of the mechanics reminds me of Tidal Waves). I was also bored stiff with the story and characters. That's one of a few reasons I switched to Commando, but I disliked the healing on them even more and missed my lightsaber, so I went back Sage. I sucked it up, found that the story picked up after chapter 1 and enjoyed throwing rocks at people. I currently dps on my Sage, even though I really don't play her too often, Balance is a fun spec though.

-Range Dps: I do not melee. For a number of reasons, some decent, some silly. But in general, I prefer to stay out of the middle fray. Especially in Swtor, where my fps and lag is already struggling, I just can't be so close to all the action. It's ironic because my favorite and preferred method to so dailies and quests is in feral on my druid, but part of it might be my bear survivability, and fire kitty staff.

-Power Source: I'm not one to struggle with power sources. I easily understood ammo as a trooper and enjoyed having near infinite capabilities to heal. But power sources like energy, for a rogue or feral druid, and those that need to be built up, similar to a warriors, tend to annoy me. As time progresses, and you reach higher levels, these issues tend to go away, but I never really make it that far.

So how did I, with all of these ideas in mind, fall in love with a Sith Marauder?

I'm playing a melee, dps only class with Rage as a power source. Something's not right here.

Maybe it's the storyline, which has so far been absolutely interesting. And not because it actually is. Being a tool for someone isn't so fun. For some reason though, being the apprentice of a Sith Lord with a huge spy network is pretty intense. And he's such a jerk but it only nurses my hatred for him, which will ultimately lead to his downfall... which let's face it, is pretty much the storyline for any Sith Lord and his apprentice.

Also, for the first time, I am absolutely in love with my romance interest, Malavai Quinn. It's probably his rugged good looks, most definitely his accent, and I love how he calls me "my lord." He's so passionate about the Empire, that it does worry me, but I hope as things progress, there are some interesting twists in store. LOVE ME! lol.

It's nice to be excited about something again. While WoW is fun and all, it's in that weird slump between expansions where things have died down. I'm still being dragged through lfr and have the second half to go. But more on that later.

When I hit 50, my lord is getting two purple lightsabers. Hell yah!