Gamebryo, allthough they also make claims to have made "heavy modifications". Still, Rift has been, and currently are, suffering from much the same issues that TOR does, ability lag etc.
Afaik the lack of day/night cycles was a design choice, but it definitely snows on Hoth, sometimes on Alderaan and I've seen dust blow on Tatooine.. it even rains on Dromund Kaas.
Tried a bunch of servers on a Trial account just now and I can't get on any of the locked servers, I just get a message that says: "This server is locked - you may only create characters on this server if you have a character on this server already". Seems to me it's working as intended...
Edit: Not entirely true.. it seems like RP-PvP servers lets you on, no other type does though.
Ah, fair enough.. guess I didn't play long enough. Still, it would be annoying playing for an hour and then get that message. Should be told when logging in or something.
While I agree that not seeing anyone around would be suspicious.. there is no message telling you what's up, I know because I was curious and just tried it, they should not allow new chars on these servers.
They really should hide the origin servers to people that doesn't have characters there so that new players doesn't make the mistake of creating their chars there...