The star status does not depend on who enters the tournament, but how much the prize money is. Inversely, you can also see good players playing in low-ranking tournaments.
But let's see who the top missing people are:
MS (in order of importance)
Gade, Jonassen, Susilo, Boonsak, Shon, Park Tae Sang, some Europeans like Palyama, Joppien.
Not that many IMHO. One or two players in with some chance and the others dark horses at best.
WS
Zhang Ning, Zhou Mi, Gong Ruina, Mia Audina, Yao Jie
Do I need to go on? Quite a depleted field. Chance for also-rans to make a mark here.
MD
Top Danes and top Koreans (no news, have they retired?)
Since the top Korean pairs are just missing generally, it looks like the only top pairs that are skipping Indonesia are Lars/Jonas and Jens/Martin, neither of them clear favourites for the title in presence of the Indon pairs.
WD
Gao/Huang, Wei/Zhao, Chien/Cheng
Since the two Chinese pairs above are not making huge impacts anymore, I think the field is still strong. Some empty semi-final or quarter-final spots up for grabs.
XD
Jens/Mette, Chen/Zhao, Rasmussen/Olsen
None of the above are title favourites even without taking into consideration the emerging talents (who are all there BTW).
So looking at the overall picture, the only event which is visibly diminished is the WS event. The others are still quite strong, definitely on par with a 5* event.
