No, crew missions do not have any light or dark side.

As I recall the world boss on Hoth could drop white. Ofc that was in beta, not sure if that's changed.

I get the feeling these were last minute additions to Cybertech prior to launch in an effort to broaden the profession. I never tried Cybertech in beta so I'm not sure of that, but I know from experience that the riding mower was an early and unpopular speeder in beta. Hopefully they will be revisiting this in the near feature to make them BoE and actually make the "custom" speeder more customizable. A selection of colors, at the very least, would help. I could even tolerate the appearance if it had a benefit over vendor speeders. Perhaps more durability to mob attacks.

Scheduled Maintenance Periods between December 15 and December 22. After that, Tuesdays.

I can't comment on the first boss fight as I haven't seen the chest bugged. On the boss fight vs the 4 mobs we did have the chest remain locked the first time. Doing a bit of reading we found someone saying you needed to take them down in a particular order. And forgive me if I don't recall the names as I don't have that in front of me: Consular first (left most), then Sentinel (second from left), then work the other two down to die at roughly the same time. I can't say for sure that is the solution, but that sequence allows us to open the chest. As for difficulty, we were able to finish this Flashpoint with 3 players, two 23s (tank & dps), a 24 (healer) and a DPS companion. It helps if you save and activate the medical droids just before the fight.

Star Wars fan since childhood. Lucas Arts fan since X-Wing. Bioware fan since KOTOR (and ME of course). SWG was my first MMO, lots of others since then, but TOR has been the one I've been waiting for since I started hearing rumors 4 or 5 years ago. Been beta testing most of the year and am just as addicted now as I was on day one.

So far Anchorhead does appear to be a good server for PvP. I can't speak to OW since I'm not yet to Tat and beyond, but Warzone queues take a few minutes at most by late morning, and today I often spent only seconds waiting. Not bad for daytime play. They seem to be pretty well balanced as I generally find myself on the winning team about 50% of the time, and its usually a proper Imp vs Pub fight. If warzones are any indication I'm really looking forward to OW PvP on Anchorhead.

One word.... Midichlorians