A good portion of the appeal of Star Wars is what was done with the EU for years, not just the original movies themselves. Granted, there were some pretty bad EU stories, but there were some excellent ones as well (I would say the majority fall into the excellent category). I wish they had canonized some of the more consistent aspects of the EU instead of just washing their hands of it but leaving it available to cherry pick from.
I'm cautiously optimistic. I figure JJ can't screw it up any more than Lucas did with the prequels.