I think the instancing has also been considerably improved, since on this replay I haven't run into the (previously very common) situation where you arrive at a quest location and find someone else has killed the target / picked up the quest item and you have to exit the game, go back in, and hope that the instance you end up in this time has the item you need. They have also added human NPCs and factions, which make the world seem much more alive. It's also much less grindy - in the initial release, you spent way too much of your time going around the map and collecting literal junk so you could fix your gear - that mechanism is still there, but it's been adjusted to be way less obnoxious. In particular, the level scaling used to be insanely broken - say you were level 30 and then someone that was level 200 came into the same area - at which point everything gets its level bumped up and started to kill you with one hit. I loaded it up again a while back, and although I don't think I will ever be able to get over the hideously broken state it was released in, I have to admit that it's hugely improved now.

For the republic fallout