Except you seem to forget that with the 2 minute runback...you still had the double load screens. Also more often than not you had to foot it all the way back to where you died. There was no checkpoint system.

What does it matter to 99% of the population if the patch is released on a random day because you can't be "competitive"? You get nothing special for being OMG FIRSTIES to kill a boss or clear a zone. In fact you're screwing yourself because now for the next 3 months your type will probably complain about the lack of content. Basically what I'm saying is Bioware doesn't care about server first or world first, the majority of the playerbase doesn't care about server or world firsts, so deal with what you're given and don't expect a special heads up on content or patch times, if you want to be competitive then be competitive and ready to go always, if not...stop crying and pretending your special.

A few years ago........ "God having to ghost run ALL the way back to the fricking instance is annoying...it eats up too much time." Now... "God having to sit through two loading screens just to get to a point close to where we wiped at is annoying...it eats up so much time." This is a huge quality of life and is done to avoid zerging encounters without having to code in doors/walls that could very easily bug out. Due to the "checkpoint" system this game already has the best instance recovery system I've ever seen.

Random is random. As an Immortal specced Juggernaut, in two runs I've gotten tank leggings, a DPS belt, and a tank earpiece. It's defiantly there...just random is random.

You need to reset the quest instance, you can do this by whoever owns the story area right clicking on their portrait and "Reset Local Instances" The elites are standing there because that's where they spawn and the group probably wiped.