Ding comes from MMOs that where gaining a level in itself was a lot of work and a challenge, example Everquest, early days Final Fantasy XI, the ding was an achievement in itself. In games like WoW, SWTOR or other modern MMOs gaining a level really doesn't take that much and it happens way too often so it isn't deserving a ding in my opinion yet people who never played those hard leveling games use it.

While you are entitled to play just as you want you must also understand its a bit compulsive trying to do all content there is on one character, I have to question how deeply vested you really become with the tasks you perform, story wise it would be like reading 20 books at the same time. What motivates your character do perform every request asked from them? Why would you obey/agree to help/show pity/punish anyone who wants something from you? Sounds like your character is running everyone's errand with no real motivation. If you take it out of context doing every task asked from you it kind of reminds me of other mmorpg's where you to a large degree actually don't care about why you do the things you do as long as you get rewarded for it. And if that is the case why getting stuck on old content when you can get rewarded from new content?

Sorry but as a FFXI endgame player I can say you are dead wrong, a lot of the tough bosses have timers, just one example is pandemonium warden while now outdated was at a time the toughest encounter and had a timer before despawning entirerly losing your precious pop item that took so long to get. Also if you look at newer content the same goes for voidwatch encounters they all have time limits and some of them can actually enrage. Good gear is absolutely required to do the hard stuff it was true back in the HNM days and its true today with voidwatch. That being said skill plays a much larger role in FFXI for sure.

What's with the compulsory disorder having to do every little quest there is and force yourself to find people to do every heroic you can find?

This is a fundamental problem of theme park games, developers struggling to keep up with new attractions to keep the players busy. But as a launch title I would say that they released it with a lot of content compared to other theme park titles. It would be nice with some sandbox elements even if they are just side stuff, some excellent ideas already mentioned, swoop races, pazaak etc.

Just about any modern single player game has long load times today due to the large amounts of assets that has to be read, console games are even worse than PC. For a MMO yes its a bit longer than other MMOs but still a bit exadurated in this thread. The problem is however amplified because you zone a lot in this game, between planets you have to zone twice onto/off your ship, entering exiting warzones, traveling to flashpoints etc, so the general feeling is that loading times are much longer because it happens so often.

This tells me you don't know much, ahem. You can just move the game from one HD to another, you don't need to reinstall it.

Again, if you are going to compare to other games then also take into consideration that other games you get to play your class from level 1, even if you have limited set of abilities after an hour or so you have a basic feel for the class and see if it's a playstyle you like or not. In SWTOR you make the choice around level 10 after having invested hours into your character and story, this is the main difference and what makes it a tough and sometime regreting choice.

Hell yea! Cooldown and ability delay fixes I love you.

Stop accepting every little mission you see, problem solved. Siths saving cats? Jedi's investigating bike thefts? Bounty hunters working for free? Agents doing things that doesn't concern the empire? Just say no.

Why are you naysayers assuming that the change would be available to high level characters? When you get the choice IN-GAME you are kind of perplexed, you have two boxes of descriptions and the talent tree to look at and hopefully make the right choice, if you get to "test-drive" said class a few levels it wouldn't be so bad, in other games you get to test drive them from level 1 and see if you like them or not, here you don't get to do that until you invested a couple of hours into your character, that's what complicates things.

Sure it does give a degree of mitigation.

Or you could give low levels a grace period, say up to level 15-20 you can change AC if you want, that way you get a feel for it and see if it fits you or not. I have a level 11 Operative that I regret not going sniper with, sure it's just 10 levels but going through hutta a third time (got bounty hunter) is not something I'm looking forward to.

It could also be that in popular lore (movies, tv series etc) you mostly see jedi side portrayed so if you haven't read any books or lore outside of that you might be "sith-curious" so to speak. Yes the game is more than jedi/sith but that's the general plot anyway. Also there is something about empire technology design that is very appealing, at least to me, their battleships, fighters, robots, it creates a very unique sci-fi setting. Who doesn't like tie fighters or imperial guards?

Say what, I moved the game to my SSD disk and it was like day and night, huge difference.