OP, thank you. this thank you is not only for the research and time involved, but for the realistic and practical comparisons.

i'm not going to disrespect the late swg community, but i would like to know what they saw as "good" that i didn't i was in swg during the time of 6 months, between launch and "somthing somthing return to light speed." 1 you could only make 1 character per account. 2 if you didn't bot and grind through the game you were wasting your time. 3 some classes were impossible to play alone. so what did others see that i didn't?

granted, she does have some really funny zingers when your running around, but her charm kind-of ends there. one person mentioned that a poster doesn't understand her if they are not a roleplayer. i am a devout roleplayer and dm. if she were a player in my game i would tell her to knock the crap off becuase her character portayal is ruining the enjoyment of the game for the "light sided agent", vector, and temple. others mentioned she is well written, and i believe she is only adequately written. i beg to differ for two reasons. 1 if she would be well written, she would appeal to the majority of the audience, not a third or a quarter of the player base regarding the agent. the love/hate relationship gap between players and she is to vast to qualify as even ok. to those who love her, your not recieving some subtle insight that the rest of the majority isn't, she is just written for you and not us. that said, congrats and i'm very happy you enjoy her. 2 if her job in the story line is supposed to be a femme fatale in terms of the old detective/ spy movies, she fails terrifically. even fans of kaliyo give there sympathies to players who try to romance her. she should be a "dangerous romance" not a "retarded if you even try, and your the idiot who envited her into your ship in the first place romance". difficult and complex social issues does not automatically make her well written by any means or standard. she is an awkward fit when shes coupled with the agent in the beginning and stays that way until the end. an awesome suggestion is if players could trade companions at level 50 with other players. kaliyo for mako, gault for vette, pierce for andronikus, khem-val for anything but khem val... maybe just a twi-lek dancer from dromund kaas?

best moment with kaliyo is on nar shadda: "hey ugly, i'll give you 20 credits to lick my feet. whoa! hey he said he'd do it! you got 20 credits i could borrow?" i think a lot of people were expecting a similar story line to the republic trooper when they played the agent, and got the dirty half of james bond. i was reading in the forums that the trooper story line in regard to his companions seemed more a pep rally for the republic, and frankly, thats kind of what it should have been for the agent too. kaliyo doesn't fit that at all. in fact if not for temple, none of them really fit that. i think people would hate her less if they wern't stuck with her for 30 levels. so she is not in our face constantly. i get the direction they went, and its not exactly what a person who wanted to play a light side chiss/human/cyborg might have wanted. but it merges with my mostly neutral rattataki just fine. the way i was able to bypass a lot of the anti-imperial nature with kaliyo was to ask questions when the option for chracter input to the story line came up. usually it came down to these three options: 1 witty snide remark. 2 general question. (she doesn't seem as adverse to them.) 3 dark side cliche bad guy babble. at first i really didn't like her, but i save most of my loathing for khem val. especially when you play as an assassin/darkness spec. she slowly grew on me, but i would be hard pressed to call her my favorite. i love ashara!

also the SI storyline must be somewhere down the middle, because when i was playing it it felt it leaned too far to the dark side and was very hard to be a light sided inquisitor. the story also felt like it favored a female gender.

plain black robes? i'm iffy on it until i log in and see the "feathers and rags" pvp gear im wearing. then yes. plain. black. simple. robes. with one red or blue led light would be nice.

i like ashara. the SI story line as a whole, i could take or leave. ghost busters in space... i played "mostly light side" so it was a nice change from smelly evil khem, its khem want to leave behind.

i basically do the same thing. my sith inquisitor is a mostly lightsided guy with exception to killigs, hutts, or colocoids. any incectile or slug race is "kill on site". i'm playing a rattataki assassin and the way i would describe himwould be as a warrior philosopher. since his particular race is prone to conflict what better way to achive that result then to be a light sided sith?