Based on your specs, you probably have a relatively slow hard drive. The best option would be to upgrade your hard drive to something faster (7200RPM or more). This is all assuming you have a 5400RPM hard drive. On a side note, why do people abbreviate the game as SWToR? The "o" is for "old," a word you normally have uppercase in a title. It should be SWtOR, or just TOR.

Even if I didn't agree with you (I do agree with you), I would ask Bioware to look at this thread.

We can go and compare WoW and TOR all day. They're both MMOs. My problem, though, comes when people assume TOR should be just like WoW. A game that's 7 years old and has had 7 years to wrinkle out its bugs and develop new features. Sure TOR could have LFG/LFD and any number of the other things people want, but something would have had to been sacrificed, and people would be complaining even more.

Bioware included instancing because they make single player games. As such, they made a single-player story, which is dependent upon the evolution of an area as you move along your journey. Of course, this raises problems when you introduce multiple players, who can be at any point along this progression. As such, there are two solutions: phasing and instancing. Phasing would be like instancing, but with multiple people in the area. Say there are parts 1, 2 and 3 of a quest, where each part is a progression, say with different enemies and NPCs, or even different terrain. Everyone starts in phase 1 (part 1), and when they finish, they are moved to phase 2. They are in phase 2 with all the players who are on part 2 of the questline, but cannot see the people who are in phases 1 or 3. However, what do you do when someone moves out of the phased area? Who do they see? What about when they finish the quest? Do you put them back into phase 1, which would break immersion, and make the story of phase 2 and 3 completely pointless? And if you add in phases 2a, 2b, 2c, and 3aa, 3ab, etc. etc. for the branching storylines, which are such an important part of SWtOR? What do you do then?Maybe someone can come up with something, because I sure can't think of anything that wouldn't be overly complex. Bioware went with instancing, and at this point I don't think they can completely write over instancing with phasing. But the instancing isn't necessarily a bad thing. Guild Wars did it fine, and if anything, the main hub areas in TOR are too big, making them feel a lot more empty than they really are.

How do you explain the video proof I posted (pulled from the front page), and the other movement cancel video proof? How do you explain the clear imbalance between the first ranged ability in the game for the SI and JC?

Someone did. On the front page, no less. Basically, the animation is the priority in SWTOR. There are other examples of this, too. The Jedi Consular has the basic ranged spell, Project, which is an instant cast. However, because of the animation, it actually takes about 1 to 1.5 seconds for the spell to actually do anything. Compare this to the Sith Inquisitor's equivalent ability Shock, which has no animation, and thus is actually instant.

When upgrading a computer with switchable graphics (like you have), there should be a special driver on the computer manufacturer's website. That being said, my sister had a problem where she would launch Amnesia and it would default to her integrated graphics. She fixed it (so it would go to her dedicated graphics), but I'm not exactly sure what she did. However, it is possible. Perhaps do some searching around?

I've got pretty much the same thing (Clevo P151HM1 from Malibal), with a GTX 560M. Game runs good in PvE areas (45-70ish fps), and drops in PvP. Settings are a mix of low/med/high, with plant details on the lower end. We really need more than 2 "on" settings for shadows.

I find it baffling you don't have enough money. Either you're not looting grays (you do have enough inventory space for it), or you're simply going in, doing an objective, and quick traveling out. Killing the extra monsters on your way in/out of an area (besides getting you a good bit of xp) gets you a good amount of grays to sell to the vendor. I'm 17 and have about 11k credits, which is probably lower than it should be because of companion missions.

How much will that drop the 20th? The 25th? February 1? You can't judge a game in its first month or two because of the free month everyone gets. Besides, even if "half" of WoW's accounts are Chinese "gold farmers," I'm willing to bet TOR will have them soon enough. And who cares? In the end, that's people playing the game, and money in Blizzard's pocket.

Do you really think that helps?

There is ability delay, masked by animations. The Jedi Consular is an example. Developing a scaling UI system that works well and isn't (very) buggy takes time, you know, OP.

Simple case of the vocal minority. Actually, everything here is vocal minority.

It's not needed because it's a new game. There are players in most all areas to group with, players willing to do all content. Once the game gets older (say, a few years), and people are not willing to do certain content, and lower level areas are completely empty (whose idea was it to make PQs almost mandatory?), then the LFG tool will be needed, to ensure the content is still done.

I'm sorry, but if you don't want to play the game because it has no AA, then I probably don't want you in my game anyway. And as much as I love my addons in WoW, they're not absolutely needed. However, the UI does need to have more customizeable options, particularly when it comes to the scale and placement of elements.