The bot you mention 'Training Droid: Hovers at your side for combat assistance' it's just a pet. It hovers around, but cannot assist you in any way. It doesn't give XP bonus, or anything.
As far as I know it is only available to CE owners, no ?
The main issue with PVP is that the number of matches per day is limited if you are F2P.
Same goes for "Flashpoints" and "Operations" (FPs are raids for 4 people, rarely 2, and OPs are for 8 or 16 people).
The middle thing between subscriber (and as a user of anm "play time card"you are a time-lkimited subscriber) and an F2P player is what is called in SWTOR the "Preferred Status". DDO has a similar thing.
My biggest complaint is the "Artifact quality item allowance", so I call it, which allows to use items in purple-framed "artifact quality" with your character and your "Companions". "Purple-framed" means that the items' icon has a purple frame around it. Green frames are normal items, equippable by everyone, but they are not BIS ("best-in-slot"). BIS are only "artifact quality" items
And this "Artifact qiuality items allowance" is quite expensivew in terms of buying via Cartel Coins. It's not really p2w, because you can easily play your game without the "purple items", but it is quite an annoyance not being able to use them.
The secvond most irritationg restriction imhpo is the allowance how much Credits a character can have. F2P least, "Preferred Status" middle, subscribers most.
But the worst thing, imho,m is, that F2P cannot make any bug tickets. And thus not get any help.
F2P FAQ :
http://www.swtor.com/support/helpcenter/6449
To see all restrictions, look here :
http://www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com/free/features (Hold the mouse pointer over the bullets to read the tooltips with the details there.)
In my opinion, DDO is far better, because it has far less restrictions. But it is not Star Wars, though …
Well I downloaded the game and while my old computer could technically play it, it was bad. For comparison LOTRO plays well on my comoputer and looks very good. SW at the rock bottom settings would stutter along and looked horrible. I may try it again when I get a new laptop, whenever that is.
Yes, that's imho a big problem, too.