Do a disk check; if it can't write to the hard drive, it'll sit there. You'll probably need to go back to the original launcher, too, and do a file repair. There's an application called "launcher_fix" or something like that in the SWTOR directory that can do that. (Don't have the exact name, I'm not booted into Windows at the moment.)

Similar issue here. I had some bad sectors on the hard drive and one of the files was ****ed. Chkdsk told me which one and I deleted it. I then ran the FixLauncher program from the SW:TOR directory, and it gave me back the old launcher with the repair scan feature.

Warhammer Online (aka WAR) did a good job with their open world PvP. But it is much less common in SW:TOR, even in the PvP servers. I think the difference is that in WAR, you had a mission. Even outside of battlefields (war zones in SWTOR) there was PvP you could do to take castles or whatever and work towards the city battles. But in SWTOR, you have no goal or sense of mission or team in open-world PvP. You are basically just harassing other players.

Sometimes when entering a new area of the map, my companions will say something about it. Or at least, they used to. The last thing I've heard from them was Jorgan's opinion on certain areas of Nar Shadda. Nothing on Tatooine, nothing on Taris, nothing on Alderaan. Do they stop having observations after Nar Shadda? Or perhaps it's just Dorne (I've been using her most often)? Is there a list that I can refer to, to hear their tourist commentary?

Well, it gets you money, directly. It also gets you schematics which every other crafter wants to buy.