You count them by level range. If you open up the who list (social panel, "o" key default then select the "who" tab). In the search panel, replace the planet name you are on with a level range, say 46-50, then press the search button it will show you all level 46-50 players in your faction regardless of what planet they are on. I simply did it 10 times for 5 levels at a time and added the numbers together. Would have to reduce the level range if you get 100 results as the count caps at that. Most I got for any band was 99. If you are level 50 then no wonder you are not seeing anyone, there are only 42 in the level 46-50 range at this time on my server.

Don't think there is any basis for your statement. It's 7:30 pm here in the UK. Half of european severs are standard load, the other half are mostly heavy with one full. I just checked the pop on my standard load server, there are 722 republic players showing up in the who list (you can search by level to avoid the "only showing the first 100"). About half of these are levels 16-35. There are only 150 of levels 36+ It's a bit early for US servers to be loaded, but I checked them too. 1/3 are light load and the rest all all standard load. Hardly surprising as it is still work hours for most Americans. There is certainly a problem of perception on these servers that they can look like no one else is around, but that is only because players are currently spread around alot and that is a problem. It is untrue to claim no one is left on your server. You may be justified in complaining you cannot see anyone to play with, but that doesn't mean your server is empty, they just aren't where you are in the numbers you want to be seeing.

An odd reaction. While the purple medpacs looked quite nice, the blue non-resusable heals better (50% better I believe). Would have thought buffing the blue so one could actually afford to make them enmasse would have been a more interesting game adjustment. As then anyone could expend credits to get better self-healing while the reusable ones while cheaper would heal less.

I liked my darkside points! They were a point of pride for me. My record of difiance against the inanity of the pure light path. I just hit Light V and it reset my dark points to 0. I may have only had a few hundred, but I want them back. What gives?

Sharding isn't why you aren't seeing so few people, think about it a bit: If your world has split into 2 instances and you're only seeing 2 people as you play in it then: 1) If the instances have the same number of people in them, you'd only have seen 4 people assuming the same distribution, if the two instancs were joined into one. Hardly an increase to "massive". 2) If your instance is lighter than the other, say only 10 in your instance and 100 in the other then why aren't you switching instance so you can see 20 instead ( 10 x 2 )? The issue isn't the shards, its the server population being spread over a large number of difference spaces. The areas are massive and there are a lot of areas. You don't see people because they are spread out. Even inspite of there being not a lot of others visible on my screen, it is still an MMO in my view because: 1) There always seems to be someone close enough to click the clickie that spawns once every couple of minutes while I'm fighting the mob that guards it, forcing me to kick my heels for several minutes waiting for the clickie to respawn. 2) Some bonus mission bosses "kill leader of whatever" always seem to have a queue of people waiting for the next 5 minute spawn. Some are happy to join up to share the next kill, some are not. 3) I can still form groups for group content if I want to. Last time was yesterday at 4 am when there were only 6 of us on Balmorra.

The light side ones that are in dispute seem to be choices between "obeying the law" and "acting on ethical principles"

Having C2-N2 as a companion. It's hilarious watching him dive into melee and try and punch things with his fists (you cannot give him a weapon).

Disagree about the holo dancer and STAP being as advertised I expected the holo dancer to remain dancing as long as I stayed nearby I expected the STAP to be usable without needing to take an expensive skill. The 40K credits needed to buy piloting so I could use the STAP, was a total surprise to me. I also think I was ripped off by the DDE edition. I wasn't looking for an in game advantage, I was looking for virtual toys that would be fun to play around with for a long time to come. None of the things feel in any way worth the price now that I've seen them in action. A non-leveling STAP that required no skill to use would have been perfectly in keeping with that. I'd even have been happy if it was slower, say 80% speed, just to encourage people to buy piloting/speeder upgrades. As it is all I've saved per character is 8000 credits and that so wasn't worth the extra cost of the DDE. My only hope is they add stuff to the VIP lounge in the future to justify it.

That's not the worst of it! I hate it more when I've just spent several minutes filling in a customer service request only to have my companion close the customer service window and lose what I've written as he proudly reports his return from a mission. Or I've just carefully tweaked my AH filter criteria and am browsing a page to find something to buy only for the companion to lose my place as he again returns and closes the AH window on me, forcing me to re-enter all my search filters and find the page I was on again!

I had a similar problem on Coruscant yesterday. I teamed with someone who had their PvP flag on. I then got infected with their flag (I didn't turn it on). Think it happened after I cast my party buff. After that had this daft sequence of events. Toggle my PvP flag only to be told "PvP is now turned on". What!?!? Toggle my PvP flag again to to be told wait a bit. Go searching for whatever the game considers a non-danger zone (or whatever it called it) as that seems to be key to it going off. Couldn't find anywhere on Coruscant where this would happen. Spent time in various cantinas doing craft misions to make sure I'd wait the 5 minutes out. Thought maybe I need to toggle it again after 5 minutes. Gack! I've just toggled it on again! Have I now started the 5 minute timer again? No idea. Toggle back to the wait 5 minutes state again (wish it would actually tell me its in this state rather then just PvP is flagged on, it would have helped) Eventually I move to the Republic Fleet station and it turns off as I arrive. Guess that's what I should have done first.

If by this you mean each player gets their own individual loot bag that they can either keep or share with others (in effect the game has pre-rolled distribution), then yes I agree it would be better. Copying the need/greed mechanism of other games was a poor design choice on the part if Bioware. Much better systems along the lines of "it's my loot so I can do with it what I like, and you do what you like with yours" are out there to have copied from.