I was mistaken about the voicing, but the main point is buried in the OP:

I need to reframe this, since I did a very poor job of getting the point across the first time around: I just finished Makeb. I liked Makeb, because the focus was on the story. There was one sidequest per area, and they were on-the-way sorts of quests that didn't detract too much from the main focus. This was good. It was a welcome change from 1-50, where there was a very heavy focus on sidequests at the expense of the story. It signaled to me that Bioware had learned something. Starting Rishi showed me that, evidently, the thing they learned isn't that the sidequests were bad. It was that the cutscenes for those sidequests were bad. They fixed the wrong problem, and I am disappointed by that.

It wouldn't really make much of a difference if they did that, because the sidequest cutscenes were never worth watching in the first place. Which is the whole point.

All I ever heard was a 3-second, "Boy, those White Nova gangsters sure are jerks!" If there was more, I didn't notice it. Either way, the voicing isn't really the point. The fact that you're glad you don't have to listen to the conversations is the whole problem. Obviously, they'd agree with you; they recognized the fact that cutscenes and character responses weren't actually making up for the fact that the content was garbage.

You like that the content exists, or you like that it's unvoiced? Honestly, the voicing never really covered up the fact that the sidequests are all terrible from 1-50. Leaving the 55+ content unvoiced is a signal that Bioware seems to have recognized this. They seem to have learned the wrong lesson from it; instead of cutting bad content or making it better, they just stopped spending as much money on it. It's a disheartening response to a problem they've obviously noticed.

I just ran across three text-narrated sidequests right outside town in Rishi. If you think your sidequests aren't worth voicing, maybe they're the sort of content that never should have been created in the first place. If you've got nothing better to spend your resources on, please just pocket the money instead so I don't have to play through this garbage in order to hit 60. This kill-10-boars stuff got old around level 15 in Westfall. Back in 2004.

The F2P version of the game is unplayable. They push subs too hard by making F2P so miserable.

You're a hero.

TOR seems to have compensated for it by making every post-mount zone gigantic.

I think this can and should be the game for all of us. JUST SAYING

Only posting those specs because of the gentleman citing driver problems. I figured I'd say what hardware I'm using so they can narrow down which drivers if there is a problem on that end.

Just for the record, the problem is minimal on my GTX 580. My brother has serious problems with dual 9800GTs and another system with an 8800GT. All three are using the latest NVidia drivers for their respective cards. Hope this helps, Bioware!

It's more speculation than anything. edit: My speculation is based off of people saying things like, "I don't know, something just feels...off." Not really being able to define the problem, but knowing there is one. I'm personally more than willing to believe it doesn't happen to everyone, so long as others are willing to believe it does happen.

lightning bolt!

There's always LARPing, I guess.