Ok, so there are good things and bad things to come with this.
Obviously, the bad thing first. Always online...
Server outages means downtime for playing. DDoS attacks (and equivalent) also can mean downtime. Let's not rule it out, especially considering WoW was recently DDoS'd. It's an on going fight that can't be pre-empted.
No internet connection, means no playtime. Also an issue.
Let's also look at the other sides/ counters.
Always online = no (or very limited) pirated copies of the game.
Let's be honest, who here doesn't have always online broadband/ fibre/cable? I can understand if people have intermittent connectivity issues, but to have no internet at all? That's not so common now.
What I do hope is that the system mitigates intermittent connectivity issues and is able to precache some functions of the game for when it goes offline.
From what I have noticed already, there are a lot of functions that are server sided. One that I noticed recently was refining.
When the server was playing up, I was mining. Picked up a chunk of material and the cargo thing was stuck on processing.
Then at the top left, it came up with a message with something along the lines of that the Refinery couldn't connect to some server.
It's quite shocking that even the refining itself (which I don't think should be server sided) is server sided. I don't see how refining is dynamic in anyway, when it just calculates percentages of materials.
It's very strange that they are going down this route, but I can also understand why.
There is always a threat of piracy, as well as the inability to upload dynamic data to players.
If something huge is going down in the galaxy... say some massive event, they want everyone to get involved... be it solo play, private group or online. The only way to do that would be to have online connection.