Let me set something straight

Dude, honestly, your dreaming..

I don't understand the support for your argument... I've reached 50 only doing fp's, planet, and class stories... your one line makes your age... obvious...

They aren't mandatory. In fact I actively avoided them when I was leveling because just the story and heroic quests alone gave me more than enough exp (in fact way more than I would have liked).

So just skip them if you don't like doing them. I sure did - though not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want the extra exp. I was tired of outleveling the next planet before I even finished the one I was on lol

Wow, calling people who do side quests as "forever alone" and "socially awkward penguin", is just another way of someone saying I'm better then you.

Really, yes there is other ways to level besides doing the side quests, but because people opt to do them doesnt warrent the name calling.

I do every mission that I come across on a planet. I do my daily PVP missions. I do my daily space missions. Since Esseles, I have only been able to get one group for Red Reaper. Other than that, no flashpoints. Considering all of this, All of the missions that I do are usually green and some are yellow. I don't have to do grey quests just to finish out a story line.

All in all, the leveling process seems to be pretty smooth. If I ran a lot of flashpoints or PVPed a lot then I may have to skip some side quests or space mission dailies.

There is only one set of planet side quests that are mandatory. Those are the Belsavis Bonus Series, and those are only mandatory if you want to be able to do the level 50 dailies. If you have no interest in daily commendations, then even those are not mandatory.

Bottom line is this, you can choose how you want to level. After your class story, you can mix and match between what you WANT to do. Space missions, planet missions, flashpoints, or PVP. It is very versatile. There are OPTIONS. That is always a good thing in my opinion. I have leveled several toons to descent levels now, and not a single leveling experience felt the same. Each was different and fresh.

My lvl 26 operative hasnt done any sidequests after dromund kaas either. Im just leveling with warzones and do only story quests on planets.

edit: Warzones and flashpoints.

Do it on an alt? The only mandatory content should be the planet's main storyline(thana vesh and darth something, the battle for Corellia, Fight for Alderaan and so on.) and the class stories, it's boring me to death to redo every single side-quest on my alts and they want us to make alts so yeah... I hope maybe legacy addresses this with bonuses or they do.

Thank Lucas they're not mandatory - I'd be crazy by now.

Side quests are madatory. A great example to use is try playing a bounty hunter through Dromund Kaas on only the storyline, no pvp. You may get a bit into it, but right around your second "contract"(the daughter), you would fail.

While I don't think side quests are mandatory, you will have to do a lot of something else to catch up e.g. space missions and warzones.

In order not to be overlevelled, I'm only doing side quests on every second planet, and then doing space missions and warzones to fill the gap. When I level an alt, I'll then (in theory) be able to do side quests on all the planets I missed out, and not repeat huge amounts of content.

I don't think the progression is very well worked out, because I see people complaining about being underlevelled or overlevelled all the time on the forums, and I find it a bit of a pain to manage myself.