Will we ever be able to access some of our character's stats/equipment, in order to display the information on fan/guild sites?

As a Canadian I do sympatize with you to a certain extent, since we get the same treatment during Canadian holidays. I play LOTRO, which has often had maintence on Canadian holidays. But at the same time, I really don't expect Bioware to figure out all the holidays for all the different countries the game is released in and try to schedule their maintenance around them all. They said maintenance would be on Tuesdays, and if your holiday falls on a Tuesday, you are going to get hit.

The problem would be if you patched to the new version then tried to log into a server that is not patched yet. Would you revert your client to the previous version? How would you manage that properly? Or just keep patching back and forth as needed?

This post I think really nails down the problem, and that being managing patches between EU and NA servers and the clients. I also would like to point out that at least they start their maintenance really early, unlike another MMO I play, LOTRO. So this maintenance should be complete before the EU Prime time. I know it sucks for anyone who plays during the day, but I think the timing is really likely the best it can be. It should be noted that while I am in NA, I generally play early in the morning. (6am EST) So the timing does affect me. I do hope that most maintenance windows are not quite so long.

It doesn't appear that way. I have done all 4 classes through all of Coruscant and still no go.

I don't remember where, but I do remember seeing it before I went to buy it. It was what prompted me to order it on day one. Otherwise I would have waited.

I am not CE, got in just after 7am EST.