To be honest, I'm not sure why everybody and their mother wants to play Empire anyway. Other than the fact that Empire counterparts have more abilities with CC components that also do damage than Republic classes do.
I've played to level 30 on both sides and to me the non storyline quests for the empire are a lot more entertaining. I started out as a bounty hunter powertech just to get the feel for the game and got to level 34 or so when I decided to stop. By then I got the feel for the game wasn't interested in the storyline anymore and the combat was getting very repetitive. I switched over the the jedi shadow but found the main storyline kind of meh and didn't really like the voice actor. At level 28 I found the play grinding so I switched over to the trooper.
The trooper's main storyline was very good and enjoyable but the non-storyline quests were drudging after having just played the jedi shadow. The worst part was that I wanted to play as a tank but the trooper vanguard was an exact copy of the bounty hunter powertech I played as and got bored of due to being too repetitive. Although I was interested in the story I realized that most of the game isn't going to be focused on the storyline or interacting with companions but grinding it out for quests. I thought of what class would be most fun to play doing that and decided on the sith marauder.
Back to the original point, I don't find redoing the empire quests as a sith marauder to be drudging like I did when I redid the republic's quests. I'm still somewhat interested in playing as a smuggler and finishing the trooper's storyline but I don't want to do the republic's non storyline quests again for a long time and don't feel like grinding it out as a trooper for 50 hours just to see how the storyline goes. As of right now I'll renew it for another month and afterwards move onto mass effect 3.
As a sidenote has anyone else's cpu temp shot up after the patch? My core temp is now 66-76 while playing after the patch where it was probably 50-60 before the patch.