Lore anyone?

Don't get me wrong, I am loving SWTOR, and im not a Lore junkie that can tell you the
history of Murlocks from WoW.

But to my understanding Star Wars the Old Republic is set in a time some 2000 years before Anakin Skywalker was born.

I roll a Sith inquisitor, and the entire story talks about the Empire all the NPC's talk about the Empire.
But there is one problem with this lore wise.

The Empire was not founded untill Palpatine made his speech in "Revenge of the Sith"

"The Republic will be reorganized into the FIRST galactic Empire !"

So just saying, the whole Empire thing does not fit some 2000 years before the movie timeline.

And your telling me Lightsabers and spaceships had no advances in 2000 years?
I would think 2000 years before Anakin, Sith and Jedi would be using the force
to throw sticks and stones at each other ! LOL

I'm not a lore junkie either. But as far as I know, this "Empire" is the "Sith Empire". And as you said yourself, Palpatine made the 'Galactic' Empire.

I'm sure there have been advances, but I don't know about these. Remember, it's a in a different time & galaxy. Things might not advance as fast as the last 40 years in our world go.

There was the Infinite Empire(Rakata) even before the Sith Empire (which is the SWTOR one). It's mentioned in TOR a few times as well. The Sith Empire (playable faction) ends with Darth Bane I believe (since he thought working together was making the Sith weak and destroyed them, creating the Rule of Two). However, there were Sith elsewhere in the galaxy running their own "Empires" during all of this as well. The Sith strive for power, and it makes sense they'd be setting up Empires everywhere they go.

In the EU they mention a lot of improvements over the years in starships (maybe that's why all the fighters we blow up in space combat can only take a couple of hits :P). As for lightsabers, what's to improve? It's a sword that can cut through just about everything and has the ability to deflect the primary ranged weapon in the galaxy.

The big deal about Sidious's achievement was that his was the first galaxy spanning rule. The Sith Empire shared the galaxy with the Old Republic. The Infinite Empire didn't really have any competition, but they had limited hyperdrives so their empire only consisted of about 500 planets.