I installed entropia on a new pc a couple weeks ago and I was up and running in maybe 15-20 minutes. Not sure how this would take hours? My download speed was not great either. I think the client loader said 7 mb/s. Although I did only install calypso. But the rest you can do while in game.
I have all planets downloaded and my installation directory is only 17Gb, that's actually small compared to most other games. If you want to download only the planets you use:
Open the launcher > Tools
Planet Data tab > uncheck anything you don't want
*cry* due to being too far away from the next DSLAM all I get is 670kB/s :-(
Exactly, you don't have to download all the planets. Just download where you want to play the most, then download space on your afk time, so that you can get elsewhere, and after that download the other places you plan to visit.
I can download everything within minutes (200 mbps fibre link), but I still only download main planet + space first, and later when am thinking of visiting will download the appropriate planets. Even now, my current install which is months old, does not have all the planets downloaded.
Like others are saying, huge install downloads are the new norm.
DOOM is free on PS4 this weekend... downloaded some 60GB I think and played only 10 minutes... DOOM not for me.