I have upgraded to Windows 8 on my desktop and am noticing similar performance issues. For me mmoloader is using 2 to 10% CPU even when EQ isn't open. I'm not sure what it's doing in the background to use this much CPU, I didn't have time to load up Wireshark to see if it's doing excessive update checks or not. Only other thing I can imagine it doing continuously would be monitoring for eqgame.exe's to inject into, but up to 10% CPU for that is a bit much. EQ itself was only using 2% CPU when I opened it (sitting at character select), mmoloader continued to fluctuate between 2 to 10%. Although I was not seeing any chopiness or anything in EQ. It still ran fine for me.
Yeah, I used to be like that too. Then I bought a new laptop / tablet convertible (Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro) a couple weeks ago that came with Windows 8.1 on it and didn't have Windows 7 drivers available easily. So I decided to go ahead and make the switch on my desktop as well.
Once you get past the OMG METRO FRACKING SUCKS phase, it's actually a pretty good OS. Lots of things are streamlined and redone to provide better information and it's just plain faster than Windows 7. Everything feels just a bit more smooth. It is annoying having to use a 3rd party start menu replacement, but I've gotten used to it now and on my desktop I rarely even think about the fact that I'm on Windows 8 instead of 7.
I still absolutely detest metro on a desktop, and have it disabled completely on my desktop, but on my laptop it is convenient at times when I use it in tablet mode. Just to note, if you disable UAC completely (which you have to do via a registry edit not just the UAC slider, which is another neusance), it will completely disable the use of Metro apps. If you try to open one it will tell you it cannot open due to UAC being disabled.
Other than a couple of small neusances, my biggest complaint with Windows 8 is MS trying to force the change instead of giving an option to still have an old start menu and disable the metro ui in the OS. That's an issue with the company though not the OS. Whenever Linux matures enough that I can use it full time including gaming and watching blu rays without having to do a bunch of work and sometimes only getting half ass working results, then I will install it on my desktop as a primary OS. Until then it will run my servers, and always reside on a VM on my desktop for when I want to use it for something.