Wow, I'm gonna go ahead and not quote all that. xD
Anyway yeah.. Most people will agree that the Agent has the best story followed closely by Inquisitor and then Warrior. The rest either make no sense like you said about a lot of the Consular stuff or they just go way over the top with things. For me the Smuggler is the only enjoyable republic storyline mainly due to the humor. The rest are either stupid, boring or over the top (Knight). Despite the Consular story really annoying me I found Trooper the most work due to being bored by it almost constantly. If combat medic wasn't such an interesting spec I doubt I'd have got through most of it.
As for PVP, pretty much all of the warzones are really great. I don't know if you've been playing with friends or what, but I personally think everyone who plays SWTOR should experience rated huttbull with a great guild setup and vent. It is by far the most competitive thing I've ever seen in an MMO. When you win a match by literally 1 or 2 seconds it takes a while to get over it all. xD Proper competitive PVP in this game is the definite highlight for me. If you find a good guild who like to have a laugh or set one up yourself it really is game changing. Eventually some shit went down in my guild and everything fell apart and after that the game felt so dull. It was like going from the Pre-CU nostalgia to NGE.
I don't know if you tried Operations but its worth giving a go to those into pvp. Coming from a raiding background I personally found them to be a little bit to easy even on their "nightmare" option, but the traditional puzzle boss BW seem to be going for is always a fun fight regardless.
If you have a guild you really love then the only real issues with the game are as follows:
Balance - They just can't get this right. Pyrotechs and Marauders/Sentinels have been OP from day one and they have yet to address it. It can really turn the great PVP into nothing more than a zergfest and makes other classes less desirable for op groups.
Trade - Too many of the crew skills feel undervalued or useless, my main had Artifice which I was forced to drop because it's just not worth the effort.
Content - The content itself is in no way bad, but they take far too long to release things. If these future "more frequent updates" come through and aren't just the same old crap spread out across more patches, then this issue shouldn't be a problem much longer.
Lastly you mentioned the server merges. The problem here was they pulled an SOE. They said they weren't going to merge anything and were going to be doing things through transfers. Everyone knew this was utter bullshit but they didn't want to risk bad press I'm guessing. However there was talk of super servers, certainly not to the same degree as EVE because there's a lot more information being passed around by the server for SWTOR in comparison to EVE, but they have supposedly drastically increased the server capacity. Considering the amount of servers which have been suppressed down, the remaining few servers should essentially be able to support the peak amount of players the game has a had in the past at a push. This is nice even though I prefer smaller servers where the community is more tight knit, but it certainly fixes a lot of issues the game has had.
So in short the remaining few servers should be able to support a huge population and they should have room to raise the cap even higher if a sudden influx of players return for some reason. I miss the competitive atmosphere of guilds on my original server to be quite honest, but the merges ultimately worked out for the best, especially when it comes down to economy.
I hope Bioware release a big worthwhile patch once they've got their F2P option out there. Something good enough to pull all the vets back in.
Anyway yeah.. Most people will agree that the Agent has the best story followed closely by Inquisitor and then Warrior. The rest either make no sense like you said about a lot of the Consular stuff or they just go way over the top with things. For me the Smuggler is the only enjoyable republic storyline mainly due to the humor. The rest are either stupid, boring or over the top (Knight). Despite the Consular story really annoying me I found Trooper the most work due to being bored by it almost constantly. If combat medic wasn't such an interesting spec I doubt I'd have got through most of it.
As for PVP, pretty much all of the warzones are really great. I don't know if you've been playing with friends or what, but I personally think everyone who plays SWTOR should experience rated huttbull with a great guild setup and vent. It is by far the most competitive thing I've ever seen in an MMO. When you win a match by literally 1 or 2 seconds it takes a while to get over it all. xD Proper competitive PVP in this game is the definite highlight for me. If you find a good guild who like to have a laugh or set one up yourself it really is game changing. Eventually some shit went down in my guild and everything fell apart and after that the game felt so dull. It was like going from the Pre-CU nostalgia to NGE.
I don't know if you tried Operations but its worth giving a go to those into pvp. Coming from a raiding background I personally found them to be a little bit to easy even on their "nightmare" option, but the traditional puzzle boss BW seem to be going for is always a fun fight regardless.
If you have a guild you really love then the only real issues with the game are as follows:
Balance - They just can't get this right. Pyrotechs and Marauders/Sentinels have been OP from day one and they have yet to address it. It can really turn the great PVP into nothing more than a zergfest and makes other classes less desirable for op groups.
Trade - Too many of the crew skills feel undervalued or useless, my main had Artifice which I was forced to drop because it's just not worth the effort.
Content - The content itself is in no way bad, but they take far too long to release things. If these future "more frequent updates" come through and aren't just the same old crap spread out across more patches, then this issue shouldn't be a problem much longer.
Lastly you mentioned the server merges. The problem here was they pulled an SOE. They said they weren't going to merge anything and were going to be doing things through transfers. Everyone knew this was utter bullshit but they didn't want to risk bad press I'm guessing. However there was talk of super servers, certainly not to the same degree as EVE because there's a lot more information being passed around by the server for SWTOR in comparison to EVE, but they have supposedly drastically increased the server capacity. Considering the amount of servers which have been suppressed down, the remaining few servers should essentially be able to support the peak amount of players the game has a had in the past at a push. This is nice even though I prefer smaller servers where the community is more tight knit, but it certainly fixes a lot of issues the game has had.
So in short the remaining few servers should be able to support a huge population and they should have room to raise the cap even higher if a sudden influx of players return for some reason. I miss the competitive atmosphere of guilds on my original server to be quite honest, but the merges ultimately worked out for the best, especially when it comes down to economy.
I hope Bioware release a big worthwhile patch once they've got their F2P option out there. Something good enough to pull all the vets back in.