My Sith Warrior is a pureblood and so he's completely arrogant. So far, he absolutely loathes having to answer to Darth Baras and takes every opportunity he can to mock the man.
For someone as casual as myself (no set daily amount of playing but maybe 10-15 hours per week), the pace is pretty nice. I just hit level 32 Sage recently and finished Act I.
The mid-to-late teens felt a bit grindy but it's been pretty fair otherwise.
Welcome to a launch everyone, it's going to be a bumpy ride. If you can't hack it, go back to World of Warcraft (since you clearly want SWTOR to measure up to an 8 year-old king of MMOs now that it's been a whole month since release).