On paper SWTOR is the ultimate MMO

Get better hardware, it's that simple. On WoW for example with the introduction of SSD's, many people were baffled by its speed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47dt-y27eYk

A reduction from 35 seconds to 18 seconds.

Now here's a SWTOR sample, loading starts at 2 seconds, ingame at 14 seconds. It took an entire 12 seconds on the loading screen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nUGvGZc_R8

Another SSD, 26 seconds go ingame, 44 seconds hit. 18 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqVqzSrvlXw

Additionally in that video transfer from fleet to ship area can also be seen at 1:09 - 1:14 for example, 5 seconds of a loading screen.

My own SSD hits roughly 12 ~ 15 seconds for the login loading screen as well, works perfect. And the other quick loading screens are a matter of about 5 seconds or so as well.

Definitely not easily half a minute. If it does take that long:

- Be sure you're using an SSD.
- Be sure you're using the latest firmware for your SSD.
- Be sure you purchased a good SSD, as their performance can highly differ between brands and model.

Almost every planet has really long loads for me. Tatooine, Nar Shadda, Belsavis and Corellia are by far the worst, where it can literally take 2+ MINUTES to load.

Loading screens are just a matter of the right components, of which a fast SSD (to read) and high throughput RAM (DDR3, pref high clockspeeds) is a must. Additionally, the CPU may not become a bottleneck.

There's hardly any programming issue in there.

People forget, that on ancient hardware, as what they're without a doubt using, this is normal behavior. Loading screens > 1 minute? Used to be normal in WoW. For example look at this footage from TBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XahCHXDKVZc

1:04 start logging in, 1:53 "ingame", 2:12 UI finished up loading.

Unfortunately not many players include loading screens into their gameplay vids, but I still remember the days I'd log in, go to the bathroom, return, sit down, and still watching the final seconds of loading. Optimization on the client's end hardly changed that over the years. If I try and boot up WoW on my netbook with a 5400 RPM HDD and DDR2 RAM it'd still be slow as hell.

If I'd put SWTOR on my HDD I'd probably hit 40 - 50 seconds loading times as well. If I'd place it on my first gen SDD I'd probably hit 30 seconds. Client optimization will not improve that a lot, as it's hardware restraints forming the issue at hand.

It's absolutely laughable that one should go out and buy a SSD to get a halfway decent performance out of SW:TOR. Have you seen the game? It shouldn't be that demanding. It isn't exactly bleeding edge, graphically. Yeah, you can brute force good performance with a completely overpowered machine, but that's completely beside the point - you can do that with any game, demanding or not, optimized or not.

Honestly, it's like someone complaining that their steak is a bit too tough and you suggesting that they use the Jaws of Life to cut it.

Overkill.

Well, if you don't want to invest, then don't complain. Loading screens in for example WoW can take well over 30 seconds as well on HDD's, in particular in combination with inferior RAM. Don't start expecting miracles by believing a game which actually has larger quantities of data to transfer into the RAM can do it faster.

Even recent WoW loading times on HDD's can be as high as about 50 seconds, probably even higher with additional worse comp specs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF4gUcGndhc

In games such as BF3 with large open maps, lots of content to read in, the times are terrible as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzFJybkSgVk

This. It is ridiculous some times. Especially if for some reason you have to hit several places. It would be really nice if there was just a kiosk in each Starport where you could just select the planet and load that way. An seriously why they ever designed that half the planets you have to go through an Orbital Station is beyond me. They seriously don't think things through first.

There are actually reasons in the storylines why they put those in. Don't have to like it.. but they did have reasons.

The only thing they did not think through was peoples impatience in todays playerbase.

As someone who plays both WoW and SW:TOR with a large number of real-life friends, it's plain to see that this is an exaggeration. My fiance's computer can't even handle SW:TOR, yet MoP load times are still under 10 seconds. You seem to have a sensationalized memory of load times before you made the switch.

Likewise, I'm not knocking SSDs. I'm just saying that buying one for the express purpose of getting a respectable load time out of a game that really should be operating more efficiently is absurd. SW:TOR made the decision to have stylized graphics for the overt and expressed purpose of being able to run on a wide variety of PCs, particularly low end. As is, you still need an extremely high end PC to run it optimally. And I don't see why anyone would choose to accept this situation.

I'm sorry, but that isn't a reason. No matter how you look at it some of the stories are designed to include them and not innately required in some way. At most you have one person you have to talk to on that just to have an excuse. Most planets you wouldn't even notice that they were not there because the story doesn't even refer to them. There is a reason for that in some instance.

Wanna Fund that new SSD.

its easy to say spend more money get better performance. The point is that on high end machines, the load times are still too long. As someone said, Bad optimization is bad.