http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30148
--- Comment #9 from julusp@gmail.com 2012-03-12 23:10:52 CDT --- I made some research. Some windows users are reporting long loading times too, but not this long (max 4-5 minutes), normal speed is up to 1 minute. Also the game load data from /assets/*.tor files into /swtor/DiskArenaCache file. It perform it so often, that putting DiskArenaCache to ramdisk on Windows leads to better loading times. But this is not the case on Linux/OSX (at least nothing noticable). IMHO it seems that wine has some problem with efficient reading of this *.tor files (some kind of archive) or problem with writing to DiskArenaCache.
Also, as this game is online mmorpg, it does not contain any kind of DRM protection, and it seems it does not have cheating protection either.