How is 120 people considered a heavy load when other MMO's have hundreds or thousands on the same server at once with no lag spikes?? The game for me is unplayable when there are more than 100 people on, my ping spikes from 200ms - 1000ms every 5 seconds and it becomes unplayable.

I hope when released officially here that we get local servers. I've tried a couple of different low population servers and the ping is making the game unplayable. It swings badly from 250ms to 1000+ms in a second and for no reason i get disconnected. Remember these are on low population servers not high. If BW gives us local server(s) with decent ping, i will come back but for now the game is frustratingly unplayable.

OP is 100% correct. I just bought a new rig and was delivered yesterday so i installed and fired up TOR with everything maxxed. The framerate is fantastic but the shadows ruin the whole experience. It is honestly like playing a PS1 game as the cast of the shadow underpins your whole experience. How can a game like WoW that is 7 years old have a VASTLY superior shadow system in their ancient engine?? How was this overlooked and who approved such a poor system design?? BW this needs to be fixed in the next patch.

Only the past 3 days or so. From Australia i was getting 150-200ms on Wall of Light which is fantastic but the past few days i've seen it go from 200ms-2000ms in a split second. Last night it cut me off 3 times completely which has never happend before. When i logged back on there was no queue so what gives??

OP is right. If your lucky you might hear a little music every 30-45 mins but it's far too infrequent. One thing that annoys me though is that when it does come on it's usually battle music which i never understood why devs put in there. In a MMO you almost ALWAYS in combat so you start to hear a good track and then the annoying as all hell battle music comes on and then disappers. Bioware, do us all a favor and disable the crappy battle track. PS - I am also HIGHLY disappointed in the overall quality of the music. It just sounds like regurgitated movie music and has to theme or no soul. This is one area that has been severly lacking so far, that other game by Blizz put TOR to shame when it comes to music and it's implementation.

Two things for the OP: (1) Roll a toon on a populated server (2) Play the real game. PvP is and will always be a sideshow to the real game of PvE

Sounds like the OP is more suited to playing WoW where there are thousands of players on at once waiting to grief/spam/harass/complain/ninja you until you are so unhappy you unsub. You should be thankful you can enjoy the game as it is because the problem with MMO's is that they are full of people. Will i be playing this in a year? IDK but damn i'm going to enjoy my experience while it lasts. It's up to BW to keep me entertained. TOR is the best MMO out by far atm.

I have this exact problem as well with my sith inquisitor. I have done every single quest, done all the bonus quests but still find myself barely at level 9 and the only quests left are 10-11. It feels like i've missed something but i've gone back over it all and there are no quests left. It makes it quite annoying when you are swarmed by a mob of 4, you are weak a hell because you are such a low level and they are 2-3 levels above you. I shouldn't be expected to grind to level 10-11 just to keep up with the quests. What gives BW??