YMMV / Star Wars: The Old Republic

A-F

• Accidental Innuendo: In "Dread Fortress", Dread Master Brontes fights with Combat Tentacles while taunting the players in what sounds oddly like a bedroom voice, leading to innumerable BDSM and hentai jokes.
  Brontes: Come closer... closer... Your bodies will be ours to mold...
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
• Alt-itis: Exploited Trope here. The characters, companions, and class stories overlap with each other to such an extent that seeing the whole story would take playing every class (or playing with a party that's got one of each per faction) to see where they all fit. Each of the eight basic classes has two subclasses and three talent trees to spec into, and future events can change depending on storyline choices. Furthermore, some quests, like obtaining HK-51 or the Bounty Broker's event, has parts locked to either Imperial or Republic. You will need at least one character per faction to take advantage of these. Further exploited with the use of the Legacy system, which accumulates bonuses across alts and unlocks certain perks and abilities.
  • The recent Dark/Light event requires players to create new characters and level them to 65 in order for them to participate and receive rewards. The event is divided into six levels, and you can get all the way to the fourth level with only one new character. That character will earn in-game rewards at Level 25, at Level 50, and after completing specific content for Level 55 and Level 60 (namely the expansions Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire), along with other "objectives" that become available between Level 10 and Level 16. If you want to complete every level (required for some, not all, of the account-wide rewards promised at the end of the event), then you have to make 8 characters (one of each class) and get them all to 50, and take two of those (one Imperial, one Republic) and get them to 65. It's still an example of exploited Alt-itis at its finest, and the game developers are actively telling players to delete each new character once it's "done."
  • The Legacy system also provides rewards for completing each Class story and finishing all conversations for each Class's Companions (a bonus to Presence for all characters for each Companion whose conversation chain you've completed, making your Companions more powerful), further incentivizing playing each class to at least level 50 at least once. (Conversation chains are locked by Chapter, so you have to complete each class story to unlock them all.)
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Moff in Republic Quesh chain: not only isn't he Elite like most bosses are, you also get the help of a squad of soldiers. Turns out he isn't the final boss of the series though...
  • Darth Baras at the end of the Sith Warrior questline isn't a complete pushover, being a normal boss, but the battle with him takes place almost immediately after defeating his much more powerful Dragon.
  • Arcann at the end of Knights of the Fallen Empire. He'd be a beast if the game didn't give you a massive boost to healing and a shield that blocks all his attacks while painting arrows on the ground showing you which way to face to do so, especially since you fight him without a companion. The sub-bosses leading up to the fight are generally tougher with less forgiving mechanics.
  • Valkorion at the end of Knights of the Eternal Throne is a much easier fight than either fight against Vaylin, one of which happens immediately before him.
  • Thanks to the addition of planet level caps a few years in, any boss battle on a starting planet is a complete joke. This includes the final bosses of both Sith stories. It's not that the planet NPCs are capped while the PCs aren't, but stats have different effects at lower or higher levels. So if you're lagging a bit behind in gear on Corellia as a Sith Warrior or Inquisitor, when you go back to Korriban for the grand finale, you will suddenly find yourself literally as powerful as it is possible for your character to be at level 12 and facing an enemy not balanced for a maxed-out player character to be facing them. In addition, the Presence bonus to companions has a much more powerful effect at lower levels.
  • Darth Malora, in Jedi Under Siege, is something of a pushover, especially in comparison to Master Gnost-Dural for the other side.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • As expected of a MMORPG. The protagonists are no closer to beating the Sith Emperor than they were at the beginning of the story; any progress they make is undone by the time the next expansion comes around. It goes past the point of absurdity in Knights of the Fallen Empire, where the Sith Emperor reveals the entire war was just a massive gambit to keep both sides distracted and then goes to obliterate them with his actual empire. Everything the players have done up to that point amounts to nothing and now they have to start over. Thankfully, after a lot of adventures and shenanigans, the protagonists eventually manage to permanently kill the Emperor in Echoes of Oblivion, so this conflict fortunately doesn’t go on forever, but still.
  • Many planetary story arcs overstay their welcome, but none quite so much as Balmorra on the Republic side. The issue isn't so much that it's long as it is that it just doesn't seem to end. The storyline contains at least 3 different missions that feel like a good, climatic finale. The best example of this is probably the liberation of Sobrik which was built up for quite a while. But then you get a comm from the commander about the next battle and you feel it testing your patience.
  • A lot of the story content in the Onslaught expansion. It started off simple, with the renewed war between the Republic and the Sith Empire. Furthermore, Malgus hints at an upcoming calamitous galactic conflict that would dwarf even the renewed Republic-Empire war. However, after Objective: Meridian, the story just keeps jogging in place with disconnected events of the War, the Emperor's attempted resurrection, a Mandalorian uprising and Malgus going rogue. Not to mention all of these subplots are separated among flashpoints, which many regard as tedious and boring. Many people were hopeful that Legacy of the Sith would help tie up the loose ends and organize the narrative, only for its release to do the exact opposite and leave even more questions to be answered.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Revan's Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome was poorly received by the fanbase during the beta, so Bioware changed his death sequence so there was No Body Left Behind, leaving an opening for Revan to come back. Revan returns alive and well at the end of the "Forged Alliances" story arc. "Shadow of Revan" takes it further by revealing that the Revan that appeared in SWTOR was actually Revan's dark side possessing his body.
  • "Shadow of Revan" seemed to address the complaints about no class storyline past level 50 by adding a single class-specific mission. Not that much, but it's a welcome change.
  • Fallen Empire was extremely well-received for its plot, return to classic Bioware storytelling, updated graphics, and especially the gameplay and companion changes—it completely revamped the companion system so that the player can use any companion in any role, unlocks approval faster, and doesn't have to keep them geared. Before this change it was basically mandatory to always have either the healer or the tank with you when playing solo, meaning all but the most dedicated players never saw the bulk of the companion stories.
  • Ironically, Eternal Throne has been viewed as this regarding the Fallen Empire story. After several months of poorly received monthly story segments, Eternal Throne quickly wrapped up as many plot threads as it could, ignored others, finished off Zakuul as a galaxy-dominating power and pushed things back as close to the pre-Fallen Empire galaxy as possible... and finally killed off the Emperor. Probably.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • Grand Moff Kilran, the final boss of the Maelstrom Prison Flashpoint. Slowed to a crawl of your normal movement speed, you and your team must narrowly avoid the boss' incredibly damaging sniper rifle using pillars as cover, slowly making your way to attack range before you can finally beat the hell out of him. And after the events of the Esseles' Flashpoint, getting revenge on him is incredibly satisfying.
  • "Torch" gets this in the Blood Hunt flashpoint. She's remarkably friendly to the party, but she is a Mando, and Mandos like a good scrap. She doesn't fail to deliver on her end, setting up rooms full of fire, shooting at the players while levitating using a jetpack, and encouraging them to keep fighting in both Basic and Mando'a. At the end of it, she is still very polite and even answers a death threat with "Aw, I was just starting to like you." so it made a lot of players delighted seeing her show up again - this time as an ally. As of Fallen Empire she's now not only an ally, but the new Mandalore.
  • Mentor from Directive 7. It's a stationary boss, yet it summons adds and chases the players around with a claw. It's chaotic, yet not so chaotic enough that a group of players can't figure out what's going on.
  • Darth Malgus from "The False Emperor". One of his mechanics is that he will try to make a player face their destiny... by which he will duel them one on one and keep the other players from intervening. It truly feels epic... when he doesn't pick a player who is lagging or is panicking from not knowing what to do. Or worse, he chooses to duel the healer.
  • Soa from the Eternity Vault operation is a very unique fight. It involves the floor collapsing and players have to jump to different floating platforms and take fall damage. Some players will end up getting trapped inside a mind prison and other teammates have to destroy the prison. During the final phase, the tanks need to lure him to an AOE in which he will get hit by his own debris and become temporarily disabled. What makes this fight memorable is listening to his dialogue while the track "Battle of the Heroes" from Revenge of the Sith plays. Though it's also a boss fight where even experienced groups can suffer potentially wipe-inducing deaths from bad luck: one of Soa's attacks during the second phase involves him grabbing a PC and telekinetically tossing them around the arena, which can lead to the PC being caught in midair when the floor collapses and having no way to recover.
  • Arcann from Chapter 16 of KOTFE. While the first phase involves moving out of his telegraphed attacks, it gets really interesting during the second phase. You grab a shield and you have to position it around glowing orbs that can damage you if you don't have your shield facing them. You also have to avoid his AOEs and if your shield absorbs enough energy, you can strike him with your shield. During the final phase, you slowly charge towards him as he shoots lightning at you and once you reach him you deliver a Shield Bash that causes a massive explosion. Simply epic.
• Awesome Ego: The Smuggler. A lot of their conversation choices are all about how their the best at just about anything, and they have the skills to back it up.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Some hate Vette while some love seeing Mission all grown up and kicking ass.
  • Some unfavourably compare Corso to Carth and Atton, while some find his simple farmboy nature endearing. Some also find his Dogged Nice Guy attitude and insistence on treating the female Smuggler like a lady condescending and insulting, while others think it's chivalrous and sweet.
  • Kaliyo from the Agent story. Either you hate her for being a lying, backstabbing terrorist, or you love her for being a hilarious walking pile of snark who's at least honest about being a liar. There's no middle ground.
  • Quinn from the Warrior story, even more than Kaliyo. Lots of fans liked him, at first, finding his competence and cold professionalism to be refreshing, especially compared to some of the rest of the crew...and then he turns out to have been The Mole for Baras, betraying the Warrior even if romanced. That broke his fanbase right in half, with one side upset but willing to forgive and the other screaming for the option to kill him. Which you can finally do at the start of "Battle for Iokath".
  • Nadia Grell from the Consular storyline, or more specifically, her romance. Not only does the relationship move quite fast, but Nadia looks up to him with admiration and is freshly mourning her dead father when it starts. Some think the relationship is cute and full of heartwarming moments, others think it's gross and full of disturbing implications.
  • Tharan Cedrax, also from the Consular storyline. You either love how completely unimpressed he is with Force-based theatrics, his emphasis on rational decisions, and his Deadpan Snarker sense of humor or you hate his guts and wonder why the hell he signed on with a Jedi if he dislikes the Force that much. Further broken by the mini-romance arc and breakup you can have with him. His romance flags are extremely overtuned, which can make him come off a huge creep if you express interest in him at any point but subsequently decide to stop pursuing him - which can happen easily, because the first flirt option comes before you find out he already has a hologram girlfriend. Many fans love him and clamor for more romance, while others who flirted with him once but said no to all his subsequent advances find it gross that he acts like you slept together even if you turned him down and treats you like a cheating girlfriend when you flirt with the actually available romanceable male character.
  • Gault Rennow from the Bounty Hunter story, mainly because the blatant railroading involved in his recruitment just doesn't fit all the obvious roleplay styles for that PC. Recruiting him, which you are not allowed to not do, effectively means defrauding your client by passing off Tyresius Lokai's deceased clone as himself, which a more honor-oriented PC—or one simply frustrated from chasing an Escape Artist all over Tatooine—probably ought not to agree with.
  • Thana Vesh from the Taris planetary questline. Her bitingly sarcastic, Alpha Bitch nature and the Belligerent Sexual Tension feel of her temporary "romance" appeals to some of the player base; the other half, however, hates her for being Stupid Evil and insufferably full of herself, and greatly enjoys having the option to kill her at the end of the questline.
  • Knights of the Fallen Empire companion Koth Vortena is easily the most divisive of all the new companions in the expansion. When the expansion was initially released, the biggest divide was his hero worship towards Valkorion, who the player base knows as the Sith Emperor. Depending on who you ask, Koth's reaction was either an indication of him being a horrible person who only cares about Zakuul and nothing for the rest of the galaxy, or a completely reasonable reaction from someone who was raised in an Empire towards which Valkorion has put up a front of nothing short of absolute benevolence while otherwise being generally good-natured. But that was nothing compared to the storm that came in the later days. Specifically, depending on the player's choices, Koth ends up leaving the Alliance after Chapter X and stealing the Gravestone in Chapter XVI! This has split the fanbase clean in half between those who demand his head on a pike and condemn players who defend him, vs those who are willing to sympathize with him and accuse his haters of being unwilling to accept consequences for their actions. Koth only leaves if the player decided to set off explosives around the Spire, not just disabling but destroying a lot of critical infrastructure and killing a lot of innocent Zakuulans in the process. Otherwise, he sticks with the Alliance.
  • When it comes to non-Sith being galaxy-threatening antagonists, the entire Eternal Empire is pretty divisive. Points include them being a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, curbstomping the Republic and Sith Empire with no build-up, and being perceived to be a one-dimensional Card-Carrying Villain faction (to the point of everyone in power behaving as Sith in all but name) whose people are drinking so much of Valkorion's kool-aid that they revere him as a Good King, regardless of his actual nature as an Omnicidal Maniac (ignoring the fact that most of Zakuul's people had no idea about this and someone having multiple bodies is improbable even by Force standards). To give an example, in Chapter 15, the option to save Republic Senator Tai Cordan, the Imperial Admiral Ranken or a Zakuulan celebrity that's decided to rebel against the Eternal Empire, almost everyone lets Malita Tal die (although this may be for simple pragmatism more than anything, the other two being more politically useful). Others like them for providing more opportunity for a large-scale Enemy Mine with the Republic and Sith Empire, giving more depth to the once-flat Sith Emperor and some find the rest of the Empire somewhat sympathetic due to the royal siblings having been abused to the point of committing atrocities to gain Valkorion's affection (or driven insane in Vaylin's case) and the rest of Zakuul being misinformed about Valkorion's true nature due to them being relatively isolated from the galaxy at large and thus creating a cult of personality (and the people can be turned against the Empire later).
  • Akaavi Spar from the Smuggler story. As a character she herself is actually relatively popular but many Smuggler players find her a tough fit in their group - she dislikes the Republic and mercy so can be a frustrating for a Light Side Smuggler while her disapproval of dishonourable acts is problematic with many Dark Side Smugglers.
  • Darth Malgus, surprisingly enough. Though well-received at launch for being an intimidating Vader-esque enforcer of the Sith Empire, Malgus became more divisive when he took over as the Greater-Scope Villain of the post-Onslaught storylines. Many felt that Malgus already completed his arc in the Onslaught storyline and that the writers keep shoving him into every subsequent event with only the flimsiest justification. It also didn't help that he continuously foreshadows an upcoming conflict and has been planning a grand conspiracy...which hasn't been resolved for over 4 years (as of this writing).
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Black Talon and The Esseles are liked for how much happens in them. They truly overshadow most of the other flashpoints, which to some players feel like recycled WoW dungeons in comparison due to the relative lack of plot that happens within them. Though some think they go on too much due to all the conversations, whereas just about all of the other flashpoints get right to the plot and don't make you sit through several conversations just to get to the first battle. (Though this has in turn made both flashpoints popular for grinding Social points.)
  • Kaon Under Siege is one of the most unique flashpoints out there. It has a very dark and suspenseful atmosphere, Rakghouls could appear anywhere. The first boss involves piloting a turret and surviving waves of infected zombies. The flashpoint also pays homage to the Left 4 Dead franchise by having enemies similar to the Hunter, Smoker, Boomer, and Charger.
• Breather Level:
  • Quesh, though not as much a literal breather level due to its atmosphere. The prior planets had a tendency to last for a lot longer, with players sometimes getting frustrated when another quest line shows up after the one they just completed. Quesh meanwhile is practically an interlude, where it isn't uncommon for players to finish in not even half the time it takes for a normal planet. Subsequently, Quesh is the least populated planet in the game, giving players frustrated with annoying chat messages some peace and quiet. It's not uncommon for there to be as little as three people on Quesh. Total. And since the planet contains one of the few datacrons requiring two people to get them, it's not unheard of for Empire and Republic players teaming up to get it. Consulars are the exception, though, as their first class quest on the planet throws them against elite mobs that would usually be reserved for Heroic Quests. While there are a number of consoles in the area that are supposed to help the player by bestowing a temporary defense-boost, the mission can still easily become a wall for Seers inexperienced in kiting and mob-control. Bringing a friend along is a good idea.
  • Chapter 9 of Fallen Empire. It's an easy-going, story focused chapter with no combat sections at all, that exists to get you acquainted with The Alliance mechanic and introduce returning characters. It doesn't seem that special at first, but compared to the absolute slog of skytroopers and knights you'll be face in the later chapters, it's a bit of a blessing.
• Broken Base:
  • The game itself was once either a great Star Wars MMO in its own right or the worst MMO ever because of EA and the fact that it tried to kill WoW by being WoW Recycled IN SPACE!. Now that time has passed and cooler heads have prevailed, it is generally agreed that, for the most part, the game is not a bad MMO per se, and that the storytelling, production values, companion "pets", and the class system are of high quality and give the game a very original charm (though they are certainly not without their critics), but that the gameplay is still very conservative (read: derivative of World of Warcraft) and doesn't truly break new ground.
  • While most of the storyline has been well-recieved by the fanbase, a major controversy concerns The Foundry flashpoint, which features Revan, freed in the Republic Maelstrom Prison Flashpoint, planning to commit genocide on everyone in the galaxy with Sith heritage, including over 97% of the Sith Empire's people. Quite a few enjoyed the story and the cameo from the always-popular HK-47, and feel that Revan being tainted by the Sith Emperor's mind after centuries of draining was an adequate explanation for his actions. Others hate the idea of a canonically light side Player Character turning into a Rogue Protagonist; accusations of Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome are frequent. Another common complaint involves him being defeated by a strike team consisting of only four people, which is generally met by the argument that he's been tortured and imprisoned for 300 years and the strike team was among the best of the Empire. There's also dissatisfaction with the explanation that the Revan post-Foundry was a Split Personality.
  • Come KOTFE, should the non-Force using classes be able to fight the incredibly powerful Force-using royal family without receiving a Curb-Stomp Battle? One side holds that they should be destroyed in seconds, while the other argues that the films and TV shows have shown that a well-prepared Badass Normal can defeat the most powerful Force-users. Raising an opinion in favor of either side is sure to result in a Flame War on the BioWare forums.
  • Starting with the Anarchist Pack, Cartel Packs were changed from being guaranteed to include two new items to possibly instead including one or two Grand Chance Cubes, an RNG-based package within an RNG-based package that can include a random Cartel Market item from older packs. Most older players who already have everything or almost everything from previous packs did not enjoy this change, but newer players were happy with a chance to get older items without having to make use of the short-lived Bronze, Silver and Gold pack system.
  • While some have praised the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion for its storyline and cinematics, others (including many who reacted favorably to the initial 9 "chapters") have criticized the expansion for its lack of new raids, shortness of chapters and lack of replayability, contentious story and lore developments (such as the anticlimatic death of Darth Marr and a sudden five year Time Skip), and changes towards all the old companions. For awhile, mentioning the actions of SCORPIO would cause a flame war, especially amongst Imperial Agent players.
  • The Dark vs. Light event of summer 2016 has divided fans. While some might enjoy creating new characters and receiving interesting rewards, most veteran players have become frustrated having to go through recycled content (much of which they have done several times over by this point) for nothing more than some more achievement points and just a chance at some rare cosmetic gear.
  • The Galactic Command system in 5.0 has garnered considerable controversy in the player-base. While this does give incentive to do some of the endgame content by applying a bonus to different game modes each day (provided you queue through the Galactic Command interface), people were not happy about the fact that endgame gear now originates from RNG boxes, or that the majority of the content in question is two to five years old, or that the system discourages alt play in a game that always exploited Alt-itis. The fact that the game has tried and failed with RNG before, but the developers seem bound and determined to shill this "new" system anyway, does not help. Even the fact that the Command lockboxes can't be bought, and so the game is not pay to win, is offset by the fact that you can only get them if you're a subscriber—that is to say, you are still functionally paying real money to make your character more powerful.
  • The Free-to Play model is one of the most divisive parts of the game. While Free-to-Play players can access the whole storyline, they are faced with many restrictions such as not being able to wear top-tier armor or have a limited amount of group missions they can do. They usually have to buy unlocks or passes to access all the content. On the other hand, players would argue that these restrictions are justified since they are playing the game for free. Back on the first hand, many other MMOs have free-to-play models that don't feel like they're "punishing" the player for not paying regularly.
  • The Iokath chapter and 6.0 expansion has created rumblings of this. For every player who is glad to go back to the Republic versus Empire dynamic, there are just as many who feel the way they're jettisoning the Alliance makes for They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, feel it wastes all the character development from the expansion, and missed out on an opportunity to Take a Third Option, given the whole Republic versus Empire war was due to Vitiate's manipulation in the first place.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: In Knights of the Eternal Throne, It doesn't become much of a surprise that Valkorion betrays you since he is already considered to be untrustworthy for some people.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Bounty Hunter companion Skadge concludes his personal story by delivering a vicious SOB-kicking to Nem'ro the Hutt in revenge. Having killed Nem'ro at last, Skadge seems to gain some peace of mind. He almost becomes fond of the Hunter, and offers them the backup of his Black Sun connections so long as they're working together.
  • For Sith Inquisitors, Overseer Harkun pretty much spends the entirety of your time on Korriban trying to make your life a living hell... and during act 3, the players have the chance to just zap him to death for insubordination. Even light-sided players felt themselves hitting it just to kill him.
  • Depending on how you feel about the character in question and his actions he committed in response to your decisions, Dark Sided players may relish when they finally get the chance to execute the traitor Koth Vortena in Chapter III of Eternal Throne. On the other hand, some who wanted him dead ended up being touched by his Anguished Declaration of Love to Lana and his confession of doing what he did to save lives, and settled on just punching him instead.
  • Everyone who's ever played a Bounty Hunter enjoys the humiliating and well-deserved death they can inflict on Jun Seros, whose incredibly hypocritical, selfish, and self-righteous nature spurred him to murder your friends and frame you with a list of crimes kilometers long.
  • After 5 years of being an Invincible Villain and Complete Monster, Vitiate finally dies for good at the end of Knights of the Eternal Throne.
  • Players rejoiced at the option to finally kill Chancellor Saresh, who had steadily proven herself more unlikeable as expansions went by, in Kot ET. And for those who don't want Dark Side points, have no fear! You can still punch her in the face without consequence—an option almost everyone takes.
  • For those who hate Quinn, you can kill him off.
• Cliché Storm: A common critique of the Jedi Knight storyline is that it's very played out, especially for a Star Wars story. The bad guys have planet-destroying superweapons, you stop them, your mentor dies, you kill the Emperor , and the galaxy applauds you as hero. While it doesn't exactly make it a terrible story, it does make it noticeably run-of-the-mill compared to other class storylines.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Not counting the purchasable Treek, players have access to six companions (technically five— nobody uses the droids EVER). Before the 4.0 update, you would often see players sticking to one companion and maybe occasionally swapping them out for achievement purposes. Usually, this was the designated healer or one of the tank companions, rarely any of the damage companions. Treek, a purchasable Legacy-wide character, was also frequently seen (and heard) due to her being a dual Tank/Healer spec. This has since changed after the 4.0 update, where they simplified the companion system and made it so you can choose your companion to be either DPS/healing/tank. Now most players will stick with their favorite companion and keep them in Healer mode, rarely ever swapping them out to DPS or Tank status. (Before they fine-tuned the system, however, Healer spec companions would do insane amounts of healing, to a point where people could solo the hardest Flashpoints alone without a dent in their HP. Players would often be kicked out of Flashpoint/Ops groups to allow a Healer spec companion into the group which, needless to say, was a *huge* source of friction between players)
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Creator's Pet: The writers have commented on how Vette is their favorite NPC in the game and how they're sure that everyone will love her. Not everyone agrees, but it has some unfortunate implications when combined with the fact that you can't do her quests and receive the related bonuses unless you remove her shock collar.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • On Voss you meet a scientist who is assisted with a mentally deranged soldier who wandered too far into the Nightmare Lands. The deranged soldier behaves similarly to a mentally disabled person. What makes it humorous is how he likes mimicking the scientist's gestures.
  • One of the game's achievements involves you killing 100 Jawas... while having the Party Jawa (a Jawa the hovers around you tied to balloons while throwing confetti) novelty item out. The name of the achievement ("That's just wrong!") even lampshades the absurdity of this situation.
  • Sith Inquisitor companion Khem Val is a Monstrous Humanoid who eats people, and reminds the PC of that fact so often it can easily cross the line into Black Comedy (especially since he never actually does it onscreen). He also has moments of outright clinginess to the Inquisitor despite claiming to hate them, such as when he's sent back to the ship on Tatooine due to the newly recruited Andronikos Revel being a Required Party Member, which can cause him to come off as more of a Tsundere than a horrifying monster. Come Onslaught and the Inquisitor can even romance him.
  • When told about Nok Drayen's terminal illness, the Smuggler PC can comment that they've heard Jedi can heal almost anything. Drayen replies that the three that he captured and tortured to death were not forthcoming.
  • During the Sith Warrior's Hoth storyline, Darth Baras Force chokes one of his subordinates to death and gives his job to the man's Number Two. Normally this would be standard Sith stuff (the scene is a blatant Shout-Out to The Empire Strikes Back), but factor in that he's doing it out of frustration that the subordinate couldn't stop Baras's enemy Jedi Knight Xerender from breaking into his holocommunications just to troll him and it becomes hilarious.
  • During Chapter 13 of Knights of the Fallen Empire, Vette complains about Gault sending her to crawl through a tight space on the Gilded Star, he tells her his previous partner didn't complain as much as she did. She reminds him that his previous partner was crushed to death. Gault then tells her his partner never once complained about it.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Has its own page.
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • Corellia in the vanilla game. While not a terrible planet, it's far too long, confusing to navigate, and its planetary storyline isn't the best. All this is compounded by it being the last level of your class story arc: By the time you get there, you're ready to just finish your class quest, not run around doing errands for people.
  • The second and final planet of the Shadow of Revan expansion, Yavin IV, was this to some people, as well. While the planet could have been great, both with its nostalgic connections to the Original Trilogy and its very strong ties to the EU lore, in practice the planet is far too small and way too short, as opposed to the far more fulfilling planet of Rishi that preceded it.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The mechanics aren't anything special, and handles a lot like a clone of World of Warcraft. The game's primary selling point is the eight basic storylines, the Imperial/Republic storylines from levels 50-65, and the Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne arcs, which are all but a single-player campaign. All of these having full voice acting, multiple branches of the storyline depending on player choice, and a unique companion mechanic for PvE.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Nico Okarr, despite having less screen time in "Return" than anyone else except Jace Malcom, was definitely the star of the show. He initially doesn't even appear in the game proper, but is available as a companion in Knights of the Fallen Empire.
  • Blizz, rocket-launching Jawa, has been this for developer Daniel Erickson, an appreciation that spread to the rest of the playerbase. He even adorns the logo of Torhead and won a popularity poll on IGN.
  • Darth Imperius, aka Light-side Sith Inquisitor. Despite being considered non-canon by Wookieepedia, they are such a refreshing breath of fresh air morality-wise in the often black and white Star Wars universe. They're cool, snarky, yet sympathetic with arguably the most success of any playable character. It gets to the point that in Knights of the Eternal Throne, Imperius is the default option and not the canonical Darth Nox.
  • Darth Vowrawn: an Affably Evil Dark Lord of the Sith. Member of the Dark Council for decades, he is funny, charming, and isn't the typical Bad Boss you tend to encounter within the Empire. He is also the main supporter of the Sith Warrior during Act 3 and unlike most of your Sith allies in both Sith class stories, he has yet to betray you. Many players like him, and he possesses a degree of popularity equal to Darth Marr amidst the Dark Council. Perhaps fittingly, if the players' decisions in Knights of the Eternal Throne lead to Acina's death, he becomes the new Emperor of the Sith Empire.
  • And speaking of Darth Marr, he won a lot of players over with his dry sarcasm, badassery, intelligence, and desire to forge a new era for the Empire in a reasonable way. Despite his few appearances in the base game, he's been taking more and more of a role in the expansions, acting as the de facto leader of the Empire. A lot of players treat him as a better version of Darth Malgus, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a player who doesn't at the very least respect Marr. It doesn't hurt that his character design partly evokes the ever-popular Revan's masked appearance.
  • Archive of Our Own writers are very fond of Vector Hyllus. Many a fanfic writer on that board would not mind marrying the entire nest.
  • The Lady of Pain from the Bounty Hunter questline, a One-Scene Wonder that many players have stated they would have preferred as the fifth companion and resident Token Evil Teammate, instead of Skadge.
  • Ashara, for the Sith Inquisitor, especially for light sided players, due to her rationality.
  • Lord Praven, a Noble Demon Sith Lord the Jedi Knight encounters who has a profound sense of honor and fairness. He spares a group of civilians instead of killing them For the Lulz like most Sith, offers a one-on-one duel instead of ambushing you, and can be redeemed to the light side. If that happens, he pulls a Big Damn Heroes during Corellia and is still very much a badass. More than a few players wish he could be a companion.
  • Theron and Lana from the Forged Alliances and Shadow of Revan storylines have proved popular with fans. Individually, Theron is liked for being a snarky, attractive Badass Normal, and Lana is liked for being one of the few reasonable Sith in the game. Collectively, they're liked for their superb voice acting, for actually investigating and doing things themselves instead of always relying on the PC, and for having surprisingly good romance sidequests for non-companions. It helps that their romance quests can be done by any gender, a first for the game. Theron especially is popular; when Knights of the Fallen Empire was announced, one of the first questions asked was "is Theron in it?", and many fans expressed their joy when they learned that not only was he in it, he'd been made a companion. Lana, meanwhile, is frequently shipped with female Sith characters in fan fiction (with possibly a slight edge for Inquisitors over Warriors).
• Evil Is Cool:
  • When the Sith Assassins lurking inside the crashed starship ignited their blades, it was one of the coolest moments of the entire trailer. That's not even mentioning how badass Malgus is in all the trailers.
  • This trope led to the amount of Imperial players to far outweigh Republic players (on some servers - Begeren Colony is evenly split, and Jung Ma has five Republic characters for every four Imperials). Tending to have more fun story quests and more interesting companions probably helps. You can still play a dark-sided Republic character or a light-sided Imperial one, however.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • SWTOR inherited part of the ur-Fandom Rivalry, having been released two years after Star Trek Online (and in a significantly more complete state). However, many people play both games, and the competition between the games seems to have spurred both development teams to improve: STO has experimented with increased companion characterization and has gone to fully voiced storyline missions a la SWTOR, and SWTOR has added space combat modes (which STO had from launch).
  • As the only Star Wars Legends property still in production, there's understandable friction at times with fans of the post-2014 canon, which has not yet touched the game's time period.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Jace Malcom, a completely ordinary Republic Trooper, has been dubbed "Sithpuncher", after he is shown fighting Sith hand-to-hand after losing his weapon in one of the trailers.
  • Darth Malgus is known as "Darth Gus", or just plain ol' "Gus", in certain circles.
  • Nico Okarr has been called "Indiana Solo" and "Han Marston" by fans.
  • Bowdaar: Just as Chewbacca was sometimes called "Chewie", so is Bowdaar called "Bowie". This is used in-game at a few points, but the nickname is so obvious it was in use before release.
  • The Esseles, the first flashpoint available to Republic players, is affectionately known by several monickers, including "the Glitch-sles", "the Bugboat", and "the Cheer-sles" due to the many Good Bad Bug-laden cutscenes.
  • "Imposwtor" is a derogatory fan nickname for SWTOR's version of Revan.
  • Aric Jorgan, the Trooper's first companion gets nicknamed "Grumpy Cat" after the kitty with what looks like a permanent scowl. Seeing as he is Cathar, and he's certainly cross much of the time, the handle fits.
  • John Ce'na for Vette due to her real name being Ce'na.
  • "Darth Cartman" for Baras, who between his mask and size vaguely resembles an adult Cartman.
  • The GSI Combat Support Droid that carries players through solo flashpoints is called the "Jesus droid."
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • For many, the game's treatment of a certain character from Knights of the Old Republic in Darth Malgus's flashpoints makes it this. To elaborate: not only giving Revan a face and a voice, but having him attempt genocide after all that work towards redemption. The portrayal was so unpopular that an entire expansion was more or less dedicated to fixing it.
  • A lot of people try to ignore how the exploration of Taris provides a Shoot the Shaggy Dog fate for survivors of the bombing who had a Hope Spot in the original game, or at least hope that some of their descendants did survive and escape Taris during the Time Skip.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Sith costumes are prone to ridiculously oversized shoulderpads and Spikes of Villainy that often come off more as goofy-looking than threatening. Kel'eth Ur◊ is one non-player example.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Satele Shan has occasionally been shipped with Darth Marr. Shan and Marr act as opposite numbers once the Republic and the Empire begin a chain of Enemy Mines in Shadow of Revan. The first time they met, they had trouble actually fighting each other due to a strong mutual urge to debate philosophy. They even team up permanently after he becomes a Force ghost in Fallen Empire.
• Franchise Original Sin: BioWare has always been know for their ambitious writing and storytelling. An MMO with eight individual class stories? Companion characters with story arcs of their own? More written and voiced dialogue than the entire run of The Sopranos? Top-notch voice talent? All of this makes leveling a character from 1-50 a real treat. Unfortunately, despite individual class stories and companion arcs being the number one request on the official boards, Electronic Arts gutted the writing budget, and refuses to invest in those ambitious (and expensive) features, hiding behind a smokescreen of wanting "The Avengers style plots." At best, any content after Level 50 are generic grinds where the content and dialogue only differs by faction. Inverted with the Fallen Empire content, which is so story-focused it's basically a single-player game. It was advertised as "a return to Bioware-style storytelling" as a direct Take That! to the above policies.

G-M

• Game-Breaker: Doing Exploration quests in general. Ever since KOTFE dropped, leveling has already been pretty easy at it is. Doing as many of these optional missions as possible with a few Major XP boosts, combined with the fact that most of them are pretty easy to do, and you're character can be max leveled well before the final stages of their class story.
• Gameplay Derailment: The first run of the Gree event on Ilum put several PvE quests in a free-for-all PvP area, possibly to drum up more interest in PvP. Well, in a matter of hours players realized that there was no additional reward for attacking other players, aside from the dubious joys of ganking and griefing. Furthermore, some of the PvE quests were much easier in the PvP area. So, cue some server-wide truces in the PvP area with Imperial and Republic players cooperating on the daily quests, orderly lines forming for an orb drop-off puzzle, and some of the PvP heavy guilds on both Republic and Imperial sides coming out of it with nasty reputations for breaking said truce. Veteran MMO players on the official forums claimed they had never seen anything like it.
• Genius Bonus: "Onomatophobia" (Greek), the trigger phrase for the Imperial Agent's brainwashing, is a fear of names or meaningful words. In the same vein, "Iconoclasm" (also Greek), means "breaking the symbol" and releases the Agent from said brainwashing. Also, "Legate", an ancient Roman title for a general or their deputy, is a fitting name for The Dragon, even though they're forced to obey.
• God Damned Bats:
  • The Skytroopers from the Knights of the Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne expansions fall into this category since they are seen as The Usual Adversaries. On story mode chapters, they usually pose little threat and are seen as nothing more than Cannon Fodder. However, players will have a lot of encounters with these mooks throughout the chapters.
  • The Colicoids on Bugtown can become extremely annoying towards the players since they are all over the map making them difficult to avoid.
  • The Shade Stalkers on Odessen can be really annoying. These creatures can detect you from long distances even if you are in stealth, can stun you, and like to stealth in and out of combat.
  • During Rakghoul Resurgence events, infected called Plaguebearers will spawn in groups of three as you move through specific points of the afflicted planet's main hub area. While they're not that difficult to deal with (unless an elite version spawns), the number of areas where they can spawn, as well as their surprisingly short respawn timers, can make moving around the hub city annoying, especially during the "innoculate infected" daily mission.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Early on, characters would occasionally appear downright Lilliputian in cutscenes, for no reason. Hilariously, the other characters would actually look down at them, and so would the camera. It seemed to work so seamlessly within the engine that the first assumption was that you're dealing with a tiny alien race before it becomes obvious that it's a bug.
  • The Esseles, the first Flashpoint most Republic players ever do, is known as the "Bugboat" for a reason. NPCs will get stuck in animations that make no sense (usually cheering), the skybox has been known to disappear, and sometimes conversational NPCs will give you your objective while lying on the floor. Another infamous bug of the bad kind had it so that 50% of the time the Esseles jumps to hyperspace, at least SOMEONE'S game will hard crash.
  • When Fallen Empire launched, all of the companions that players previously owned had not only their main hand weapon sent to your inventory, but also their pants as well, and some even lost more than that. There was also a bug allowing players to go to the opposite faction's fleet, so Sith partying on the Republic Fleet were an occasional sight, and a bug that allowed Jedi Knights to have two versions of T7-01 after they're reunited with him.
  • When early access for Fallen Empire Chapter XI launched, a bug caused Jorgan's armor and blaster to disappear during cutscenes unless you reset the mission, leading to the hilarious sight of him in his underwear with an imaginary blaster.
  • Patch 4.7.2 caused almost all non-hostile NPCs to start carrying Vibroblades on their backs causing amusing moments.
  • Occasionally when an NPC dies, their body will be left frozen in their standing animation.
  • A bug can make the player character, the current companion, or both invisible during cutscenes... but not their weapons. This leads to surreal situations where NPCs are having full conversations with floating blasters and lightsabers.
  • Another bug causes the reverse with the characters being visible, but not their weapons, leading to amusing scenes of people threatening each other with non-existent blasters.
  • Speeding through conversations with the space bar can have... weird effects on the actor NPC's animations. Like skipping the "falling down" animation while they're in a "talking" animation, resulting in them just sliding to the floor after they finish making their hand gestures.
  • Sometimes companions of your own or even someone else will appear in your stronghold in their underwear such as Mako, Vette or Skadge.
  • The Revanite Avenger armor set's helmet has a gold band around the eyes, but the band is coded to move with the wearer's brow. Sometimes it's not too noticeable, other times it looks near cartoonish like an Expressive Mask.
  • When fighting Dread Master Styrak at the end of the Scum and Villainy Operation, he will throw a random player into a nightmare where you have to kill an illusion of your own companion to exit. That is, if it doesn't send you to fight two of your companions, or even the companion of some other random class!
  • Patch 5.4 was probably a definitive example for the game: all quests in the daily areas had their base Command XP reward increased by a factor of 15, from 75 to 1125. While this was definitely not intentional, this resulted in higher player activity, with daily areas having population not seen since they were first released. Bioware eventually agreed this was a good thing and not only announced there would be no punishment for using this bug, but intentionally left it unfixed for over a month. When they did fix it, the new reward totals were still significantly higher than they were before.
  • Companions' clothing will sometimes glitch during companion story conversations. This can have results ranging from their colors going awry to characters inexplicably acquiring a nice hat.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Go here.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • A lot of talk has been going on since Darth Marr's death in Chapter 1 of Fallen Empire, and the appearance of his Force ghost at the end of Chapter 5, several of them trying at length to explain away both. This despite the fact that Marr's description in the companion menu writes him off as dead. Unsurprisingly, this is due to Marr's popularity with the fanbase.
  • Thexan is also viewed as this for him being a much nicer person than his family despite his death being stated by some characters several times.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Ho Yay:
  • Mako gets plenty of it with a female Bounty Hunter.
  • Watcher Two gets some of this with the female Agent.
  • For male Agents, this is subverted with Hunter, who turns out to be a woman.
  • Kaliyo with the female Agent, in part due to her flirty personality and proposal to run away and become pirates together. The fact that the female Agent can be just as flirty doesn't help.
  • During the initial questline for Sith Inquisitors, you are given tasks by one Overseer Harkun. He compares you, very unfavorably, to another acolyte named Ffon, a Sith Pureblood. While this could be an example of Fantastic Racism, the fact that he does it nearly every cutscene makes a few players wonder...
  • And then there's Darth Zash, the Sith Inquistor's master. Nearly every word that comes out of her mouth sounds like she's flirting with the PC, male or female. That, coupled with the facts that she only wants you for your body (albeit in a much different way) , and that the Inquisitor can sound like a jealous lover upon learning she's taken other apprentices, gives the relationship lots of different undertones...
• Hollywood Pudgy: The type 4 ("fat") female body type is clearly a fit woman who happens to have curves. As in, it's literally just the type 2 ("standard") type with larger breasts and hips, a slightly less toned stomach, and a slightly more rounded face. This wouldn't stand out so much except that the male equivalent is almost spherical (albeit obviously heavily muscled), complete with obvious man-boobs.
• I Knew It!: Penny Arcade predicted that this game was being made in 2006.
• In the Blood: Not by default, but thanks to the Legacy System, it's possible to present your version of the player characters as family. Whether that means they're a bastion of mercy by being all Light Sided, a hurricane of destruction by being all Dark Sided, or are anywhere in between is up to you. No matter what you decide, the family you create is going to be making as big a splash on the galaxy as the Skywalkers.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: After 4.0, most of the class story missions became incredibly easy due to the level sync and the stronger, more flexible companions. The final bosses of the Sith Warrior and Inquisitor class story are far more easier than they used to be because their level is scaled really low due to them being in a starter world. This was also a criticism for the Knights of the Fallen Empire story since most of the fights had very little challenge to them, though the Veteran and Master difficulties have somewhat mollified this.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: This seems to be one of the main criticisms of Legacy of the Sith's story content in the 7.0 update. Although positively received, bugs aside, the campaign is relatively short and lacking in content, seeming more like a mere content update in the vein of Jedi Under Siege if it weren't for the increased level cap.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The Dark Side Inquisitor. Yeah, they're a manipulative, puppy-kicking, power-hungry jerk, but given what they've been through, it's hard not to feel sorry for them.
  • Darth Zhorrid. Sure she's a cruel Psychopathic Manchild with a severe streak of The Caligula, but given she had Darth Jadus for a father, how could she have turned out to be anything else?
  • Arcann and Vaylin. They are puppy-kicking, power-hungry jerks, but they only want the love and approval of their parents.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass: According to many fans, Darth Jadus is the Diabolical Mastermind who is ultimately behind everything in the Star Wars universe.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Please keep the dancing in the designated dancing zones.
  • TORtanic, due to the belief the game would be a WoW killer and how much faith and money was put into it ^note In fact, someone compared how much money was spent for the game to how much was spent for the namesake and concluded that they're the same, only for it to turn out to not quite be the new MMO killer app that people believed it would be.
  • Sith Juggernauts being incredibly bouncy due to how many of their abilities involve them jumping.
  • Jokes about Darth Baras are incredibly common amongst the Imperial side, usually involving his weight issues or his anger issues. Some even consider him a Memetic Badass. One example would be this parody of the Sith Code:
  Cake is a lie, there is only pie.
  Through pie, I gain calories.
  Through calories, I gain weight.
  Through weight, I gain body mass.
  Though body mass, my belt is broken.
  The recliner shall set me free.
  • "Your weakness is in your blood!" ^note  A constant phrase from the final boss in the Hammer Station flashpoint.
  • "Choice is an illusion!" ^note Taken from a line in Knights of the Fallen Empire and used to mock the incredibly shallow choices in the storyline.
  • Knights of the Eternal Grind ^note  This is a parody title mocking the new gearing system introduced in 5.0, it is a Level Grind which involves getting a random gear piece every time you reach a level. There are currently 300 levels and 4 tiers, and you don't even get access to the fourth level until you hit level 300—your level just stops going up at that point.
  • When Arcann romance?^note With the reveal that Arcann can become a possible companion should the right choices be made, many fans began to anticipate a romance with him, which Patch 5.8 gladly delivered.
  • I Believe In The Democratization Of Fear
  • "Is that supposed to be Han Solo?"^note A common question in Dromund Kaas General Chat, early in the game's release. One of the Sith Warrior's first quests for Darth Baras has the Warrior retrieving a man frozen in carbonite for Baras. Cue some asking, apparently legitimately, if the man was supposed to be Han Solo during his stint in carbonite between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the General Chat channel blowing up with explaining how it can't be Han Solo, because the game is set some three thousand years before the films, which should be patently obvious, which might segue into a huge free-for-all discussion about the history of Star Wars Legends. This can lead to some referring facetiously to every character frozen in carbonite in the game as "Han Solo."
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.

N-S

• Narm: See here.
• Narm Charm:
  • Use the legacy system to unlock "Legacy Dirty Kick" and use the Heroic moment. Everyone will now be able to just kick all enemies in the crotch. It becomes even more hilarious if one is a ranged class, which means you might run up, kick them right in the crotch, then run to a safe distance. Hilarity Ensues.
    • "Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a durasteel-toed boot in the nards."
  • Scoundrels in general. While a Gunslinger is more classic ranged fighter, a scoundrel will more or less use their pistol in every way but shooting it. It's absolutely hilarious to see them sucker-punching and pistol whipping everyone. While their Imperial counterpart plays the same, they use a two-foot knife instead.
  • As an Acceptable Break from Reality, a lot of minor crowd control effects work on droids or animals. This makes a Smuggler kicking them in the crotch (or shooting them in the crotch) or Tharan summoning Holiday to distract them even more hilarious and simultaneously awesome.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Tranquilizer ability exclusive to classes with stealth (Jedi Shadow/Sith Assassin and Scoundrel/Operative). While you're in stealth mode, you can knock out one enemy at a time (barring some exceptions such as droids, bosses, and those who can detect hidden characters) to either sneak past them or perform an easy kill. Now, remember the last time you suddenly felt very tired...?
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Bioware tried their utmost to avert this, but unfortunately it still failed, as within a few weeks, there were people who had rushed to the max level as fast as they could bitching about the lack of end-game content.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Valkorion was in general way better received than Vitiate, owing to his far less generic aesthetic (Exquisitviely crafted armor with dragon iconography in gold and white, as opposed to Vitiate's generic sith robes), appearing multiple times throughout the story rather than being an unseen Greater-Scope Villain until the final mission and even having other characters give their own understandable and varied views on him. Whereas Vitiate was clearly evil, even in the Empire, while Valkorion on the other hand is described as a very abusive father, but also a man whom Senya fell in love with and a good ruler for the people of Zakuul, giving him more depth.
• Rooting for the Empire: Unsurprisingly, many players prefer the Empire because of the Evil Is Cool aspect. The Pet the Dog moments Imperial characters receive probably don't help, and the fact that Imperial storylines seem to be more interesting and well-written in general are more fuel for the fire.
• The Scrappy:
  • The Sith Emperor himself, or more specifically his Vitiate persona, is widely derided as a Flat Character and Invincible Villain, a blatant and exaggerated ripoff of Darth Nihilus and Dark Empire-era Darth Sidious, and a walking Diabolus ex Machina responsible for Shoot the Shaggy Dog-dom here.
  • 2V-R8 and C2-N2, the factotum droids who clean, cook, and maintain the Imperial and Republic players' ships, respectively, are disliked due to them always speaking when the player boards their ship, repeating one of only a handful of fawning lines. What also doesn't help is that they don't get any affection conversations with the player, making them rather bland compared to the other class-specific companions (even the optional companions like HK-51 and Treek get affection conversations). Mechanically-speaking, they were basically placeholder healers, less effective than the other pre-4.0 healers, and even more pointless if the pre-4.0 player was a Bounty Hunter and got their healer companion on the first planet of Chapter 1. In Knights of the Fallen Empire they're marginally less useless due to now being able to serve as damage and tank companions, and getting kills with each will award you with Cartel Coins and Legacy Titles. Furthermore, C2-N2 has a weekly mission that allows one to gain influence with the Alliance Specialists.
  • Skadge is probably the most loathed out of all the companions for being both a terrible tank and a generic, one-note Psycho for Hire that contrasts with light-sided Bounty Hunters (and provides no reason other than blustering threats he certainly can't fulfill for a dark side hunter to not simply shoot him dead). While most dark side companions can put up with actions that negate influence, Skadge is a complete Jerkass that insults players even when he's assigned to do simple crew skill missions. Oh, and he hints that he might rape a female NPC from the Belsavis questline if he got the chance. Lovely. If The Old Republic were a single-player game and companions were killable in the base game, most players probably wouldn't find out that Skadge could even be recruited. Come Knights of the Fallen Empire, you can kill him or let him get captured by Rusk's troopers, which permanently remove him as a recruitable companion.
  • Doc, to a lesser extent, who is virtually a Memetic Molester towards female Jedi Knight PCs and both genders' padawan Kira Carsen: much of his dialogue towards them consists of blatant leering. He's coded as the female Knight's Love Interest, but when other options became available in the expansions, many female PCs quickly left his sexually harassing ass behind in favor of Theron, Lana, and most recently Kira.
  • Jedi Master Jaric Kaedan is disliked by many for his rude and unpleasant demeanor, best showcased when Kira's past as a Sith comes to light. It's doubtful many cried when he is killed by Imperial players on Ilum.
  • Saresh is despised by players for her obnoxiously loud message, which always plays whenever you walk through the Taris spaceport. The hate only became worse after the Shadow of Revan and Ziost storylines, as she's proven herself to be unreasonable, hot-headed, and blinded by her hatred of the Empire, to the point of being an Obstructive Bureaucrat. She gets even more worse in Knights of the Eternal Throne. She attempts to have the Alliance Leader killed by hiring a band of elite mercenaries. She then tries to take the place as the new Alliance Commander. Luckily the real Alliance Leader arrives and stops her. The leader can punch her in the face, then either execute her or have her serve a lengthy prison sentence.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The platforming required to collect many of the Datacrons. Players are somewhat divided between those who enjoy the change in pace and those who utterly loathe it. The engine's general unsuitability to platform gameplay doesn't help.
  • The game has had. . . issues with Color Crystal weapon mods. At launch, Red Color Crystals were only usable by Dark Side characters, Blue and Green Crystals were only usable by Light Side characters. This did appropriately mirror the colors of lightsabers used by Jedi and Sith in the Prequel era, but there were other problems. First, Color Crystals were used in all weapons, not just lightsabers, and the overwhelming majority of blaster weapons in Star Wars shoot red, regardless of if the firer is a good guy or a bad guy. Second, this made role-playing a "hidden" character opposing factional alignment assumptions all but impossible. . . a Dark Side Jedi or Light Side Sith had to use a lightsaber that advertised this fact. Third, these were the only colors available in the game — except for a difficult and dangerous hidden quest to learn the recipe for a magenta crystal — so your weapon could only ever have a blade/shoot bolts of red, blue, or green, when in the lore of the timeframe lightsaber crystals were far more common and came in wide array of colors. The addition of the Cartel Market helped, adding a plethora of Color Crystals in a dizzying array of colors — and made the Archaeology Crew Skill nearly useless, as Cartel Market crystals were usable at level 10 and had the stat bonus of a max-level Crystal (and for some time, Cartel Market crystals didn't come in anything resembling basic red, blue, or green, so if you wanted those colors you still had a problem to deal with). Finally, Archaeology was retuned to make crafted Crystals just as good as the ones available in the Cartel Market, and in an expanded (slightly) array of colors to boot.
  • In Rise of the Hutt Cartel, one of the new activities that can be performed involves using a "Seeker Droid" to look for treasure. Unfortunately, the mechanics were copied wholesale from Archeology in World of Warcraft, a profession that is highly unpopular to begin with. To look for treasure, the player goes to a specified area and targets the ground with the droid. If there is treasure, the droid brings it to the player; if not, the droid blinks red and a circular indicator around the player shows in which general direction the player should try digging, assuming there is any treasure within range. The process takes at least fifteen seconds, and since the indicator is very vague, finding even one item is an exercise in frustration. Most people only do the associated quest line, and then avoid the activity altogether.
  • In the HK-51 questline, the player must look for HK parts scattered around the different worlds to rebuild the droid. To do this they will need to use an excavator that channels for 16 seconds, scanning for the parts. If players are unlucky enough, the search can last for a few hours before they finally find the part. Fortunately, players can unlock the HK companion in their legacy once they complete the quest. But it has to be done on both factions to have it fully unlocked.
  • The Reverse Engineering method of discovering better crafting recipes can cause endless amounts of frustration for some. Items you craft can be broken down again with a chance to discover a crafting recipe for a better version of that item. Unfortunately, if the Random Number God decides it hates you, this can set you back tens of thousands of credits as you burn through materials with no success. It gets even worse for Free-to-Play players, for whom the chance of a discovery is halved.
  • The decision to make every normal Flashpoint available as a Tactical Flashpoint in Fallen Empire and to make them all scale every player's level up to 65, the latter of which is especially bad for high-level players because there's a chance they'll get paired up with inexperienced players who can't be trusted to not ruin it. The Flashpoints being overtuned at launch didn't help.
  • Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne have the problem of turning the MMO into a single-player storyline, irritating players who liked to run earlier story content in groups.
  • Eternal Throne has a few instances where you are piloting walkers. The problem? The walkers have Tank Controls, removing your ability to strafe, which can make attacking and dodging at the same time more difficult (not helping is that in other Star Wars games where you could drive AT-STs - the vehicles these walkers are based on, they weren't inhibited by such controls). The only exception to this is during the Iokath arc, where the giant war droid you refurbish into a pilotable Humongous Mecha controls just like your player character (and bonus points for the fact that you're piloting a giant humanoid mecha somewhere in the Star Wars universe).
  • On Hoth, you can complete a quest to obtain a Taun Taun mount. This is the only way to obtain an animal mount without having to spend either real world money on the Cartel market, or a small fortune in credits on the Galactic Trade Network. However, the quest is endlessly repetitive and takes far too long (made worse by the fact that you need to wait for about half an hour for certain quest elements to reset on multiple occasions). Most players only do this once, rather than obtaining mounts for multiple characters.
  • One, apparently for the developers: the devs of The Old Republic seem to regret ever putting stealth for player characters into the game. This is understandable, as a full team of stealth characters can simply bypass most of an instance's intended combat, and a flashpoint that's supposed to take forty-five minutes might be done in ten. Anti-stealth mechanics—such as putting necessary quest items or conversation points near groups of enemies (both such interactions breaking stealth), enemies that spawn from nowhere and attack (ignoring stealth), or enemies that can simply see player characters that are stealthed (sometimes better than they can see ones that aren't...) and dispel it are necessary to ensure that some story or certain bosses aren't skipped, or even just that the instance isn't made trivial. However, the way the devs have consistently undermined stealth mechanics on the player's side for years has turned these anti-stealth mechanics into scrappies. Many chapters in the Knights of the... expansions had this problem, and Legacy of the Sith seems to only escalate it—every character can have an alternate stealth specialization, but at the same time stealth is being made permanently less useful in operations and flashpoints, and the first flashpoint, in particular, is filled with anti-stealth mechanics so that there are fewer enemies that don't have them than do.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • KOTFE and KOTET were controversial for multiple reasons. These varied from the seeming Ass Pull nature of Zakuul,^note Huh? The Sith Emperor had a whole other robot and Force-using army in the middle of nowhere and he's attacking both the Republic and the Empire he himself built? to the forced soloing for the story missions, to Valkorion's offers to help the PC being so telegraphed as Schmuck Bait they're unintentionally hilarious at times. Also, the storyline doesn't honestly make a whole lot of sense for non-Force-using classes to be involved with, particularly a chapter where Satele Shan and Darth Marr send the PC on a sort of vision quest that ends with them building a special weapon to use against Arcann. A new lightsaber makes a modicum of sense, but a special Force-imbued blaster really doesn't.
  • The subsequent Onslaught and Legacy of the Sith expansions weren't well-regarded by fans. Unlike previous expansions, both lacked consistent story arcs or central villains and instead settled for random unconnected plot threads like the Emperor's attempted resurrection, a Mandalorian uprising and Malgus going rogue. It also didn't help that Malgus was constantly involved in most conflicts with only the flimsiest of justification and his grand conspiracy hasn't been resolved for over 4 years (as of this writing).
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The game seems to encourage this. There's the class quest, but there are dozens of sidequests, heroics that reset daily, flashpoints, PvP, the space battle rail shooter, codex and datacron hunting, experience points for exploration, a bonus sidequest series for most planets, world bosses... it's not unheard of for players to hit the level cap somewhere during the bonus series on Alderaan (there are three chapters of story; Alderaan's bonus series is meant to be done between chapters 2 and 3).
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Many of the class stories, especially on the Republic side (and doubly so for the Jedi Consular) are pretty dull in the first act, and only pick up steam in Acts 2 and 3.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Some soundtracks in the game sound similar to tracks from the original Star Wars movies.
  • Republic Combat theme sounds similar to "Panaka and the Queen's Protectors" from The Phantom Menace.
  • "Escape from Zakuul" is similar to "Hyperspace" from The Empire Strikes Back.
  • Some parts in the music from Ziost sounds similar to the soundtrack from Alien.
  • The combat theme for the Bounty Hunter class sounds very similar to the battle music with Kazdan in The Force Unleashed

T-Z

• Take That, Scrappy!: In the HK-55 bonus chapter of Fallen Empire, HK comes across a gallery of droids whose memory banks the villain has copied. They're all destroyed in a firefight, leading HK to mourn their loss, except for 2V-R8.
  • As mentioned above, Imperial Players kill Jaric Kaedan on Ilum.
  • Several of the Scrappy entries (Skadge, Broonmark) or "love them or hate them" characters (Kaliyo, Xalek) can be killed in the Fallen Empire expansion.
  • Bad news: In Chapter II of Eternal Throne, Saresh tries to kill you and take over the Alliance. Good news: This means that the chapter ends with a chance to have her executed. And even if you don't, she still gets imprisoned and probably will not get out any time soon.
• That One Achievement:
  • Getting the Makeb Endurance Datacron is a very grueling task. Players will have to navigate through a long course of slow-moving platforms and difficult jumping puzzles that leave no room for error. If you miss one jump and fall to your death, you have to start from the very beginning. Luckily, once you obtain the datacron, it will be unlocked for your legacy so your alts don't have to get it.
  • The Rishi Datacron is much worse. It requires players to camp for creatures that drop a special item to unlock the Datacron. The catch is that the creatures have a 5% chance of spawning from killing smaller creatures that have a 5 minute respawn timer.Have fun spending all day camping for those creatures... It was far worse during the early release of Shadow Of Revan since the packets could accidentally be sold as grey items and be lost forever.
• That One Attack:
  • With the release of Legacy of the Sith, many ranged enemies were given a new "Full Auto" attack where they lock on to your character and unleash a torrent of blaster fire. Regardless of level or location, this volley shreds through your health deceptively quickly, meaning that if you aren't paying attention, or if you're unlucky enough to run into multiple enemies that have Full Auto at the same time (which usually happens in Heroic missions), its very easy to go down before you even realize what just happened.
  • The Final Boss of the Jedi Consular's storyline has a rather nasty attack that can catch unaware players by surprise. Once the First Son is reduced to around 30% health, he'll attempt to collapse the entire cave you're fighting in on top of you which, needless to say, is a One-Hit Kill. The only way to stop it is to use your class' interrupt move, a move that many players rarely, if ever use normally.
  • Darth Malgus' knockback attack at the end of The False Emperor. Normally, knockback attacks are more annoying then dangerous, and even then mostly if you're playing a melee based class, but Malgus' knockback stands out for two reasons: the range he can knock you back is huge, and the arena you fight him in is mostly made up of a deceptively narrow walkway. If you're not careful with your positioning, it is very possible for Malgus to knock you off the platform to your doom, forcing you to start the whole fight over again.
  • Soa's second stage in "Eternity Vault" includes him possibly telekinetically grabbing a PC and sending them flying through the air and aimlessly bouncing off the walls for 30 seconds or more. This is the same boss where the floor collapses twice and you have to collectively platform your way down to the next stage of the fight, so if the other PCs reduce Soa's HP enough to trigger the next stage while you're flying through the air, you're likely to just fall to your death.
• That One Boss:
  • Operator IX in the Terror From Beyond Operation. Many groups consider this boss (3/5) to be tougher than the final boss, as it is a MASSIVE COORDINATION CHECK. The first phase consists of cores that you have to destroy and 2 players must channel an ability based on the colour they have chosen to deactivate the core's shields. Adds will spawn that will interrupt the players if not stopped and a nasty add will spawn if you fail to destroy the cores. Furthermore, in NiM the cores must be burned down within seconds of each other or the boss will enrage and wipe the group. Also there will be an Orb that will CC players and must be destroyed by a player of the same colour (you need the buff it gives you for phase 2). After you've cleared the 4 parts of phase 1 (which is tough) you have to deal with phase 2, which primarily involves staying away from other players who are targeted except for the player who has the required buff who has to touch them to prevent a wipe while everyone stays away from the circles around the boss which will wipe the raid if they touch the wrong colour.
  • Master and Blaster in 'The Ravagers' Operation is one of the toughest bosses in an operation even on story mode. The group will have little room to maneuver due to the growing AOEs that spawn, made even worse with bombs applied on several members that will detonate if some group members are too close to each other. When Master shows up, he will do plenty of damage to the tank and he has an ability called laser cutter which will kill a member if one player does not help absorb some of the damage from the ability. Master will also surround itself with fire in one phase and will deal heavy damage to melee players if they don't get out fast enough. On the other hand, the voice acting and dialogue during the fight is entertaining.
  • The Underlurker in the 'Temple of Sacrifice' Operation. This boss, like Operator IX, is a heavy coordination check. Tanks, DPS, and Healers need to be in a certain position for a small amount of time. If they position incorrectly, the team receives a lot of damage. You also need to kill the adds quickly because they dish out raid-wide damage. The overall damage of the boss can pose a real strain towards the healers. The boss also has a very tight enrage timer so you need to have really good DPS in your group. Many PUGs have fallen to this boss.
  • HK-47 in the Foundry flashpoint may be a fun cameo, but if your group isn't on the top of its game it'll be knocked on its ass. A few glitches that'll instakill an unlucky party member only make it worse.
  • The Nightmare Pilgrim on Voss. First of all, he's triggered by some Schmuck Bait posing as a lore object, leading to unsuspecting players getting squashed flat when they just wanted to update their codex. Assembling a party to take it out anyway? You cannot have more than 16 people otherwise, instakill. Otherwise? One-Hit Kill. Second, you need an alpha-wave generator on all 16 people (and said object can't even be purchased on Voss; you have to truck to Section X on Belsalvis or go to Ilum to get it, and do their dailies to grind for the comms to buy it) or it's One-Hit Kill. And after all that? Two bosses spawn and there's an annoying debuff that means the party has to constantly switch between the two and kill them both at the same time or the survivor enrages and pulls a wipe. And when you do manage to kill it, you're saddled with a debuff that lasts five days preventing you from attacking it again that week or... you guessed it. Little wonder no one wants to bother getting the achievement.
    • The Pilgrim's fight has been toned down a bit over the years. The generator is no longer required, at least, but many of his more powerful abilities still remain, and will wipe your party if you aren't careful. In all honesty, it's still not worth the achievement.
    • Now keep in mind that you have to kill him multiple times to earn one of the special mounts (The Aratech Coral speeder) in the game.
  • The Corrupted Elder Subteroth on Oricon. It's a bit of a gear check, and while it is a solo mission, it really should be listed as a team mission. If you have the gear to beat it solo, you might already have better than the gear reward the mission gives. The same could be said of most other Oricon missions, for that matter—you can't get to Oricon without being level 55, so the entire single-player questline is basically meant as training for the Dread Fortress and Dread Palace operations.
  • IR-77, the champion-level assassin droid that sometimes ambushes you during the macrobinocular storyline. He's not that dangerous for a champion, and he always runs at about 50% hit points, but he's a clear sign, along with other hints throughout the series, that the quest line is going to end in a Heroic 4 mission. How? Well, he has three attacks that stunlock you, and has an ability, not unlike each player class to overcome at least one stunlock applied to himself.
  • Ortuno, the second boss in the "Depths of Manaan" flashpoint, for one crucial reason: Flow. If you aren't standing in one of the water pools when he channels his lightning, you take serious damage. If you are, you die. Even on normal difficulty, he's tougher to fight than the flashpoint's final boss. He's often considered harder than some Operations bosses. Even when he is not using flow, he also does heavy single target damage if a player is unfortunate enough to be standing in one of the puddles. Doing this boss on normal mode without a tank or dedicated healer can be frustratingly difficult.
  • The final boss of the Battle of Rishi flashpoint is a first rate pain. Big walker in the center with a lot of hit points already. Then, add the heavy-hitting AOE attacks that take up most of the board and make melee tanks put a lot of effort into running around just to keep from being clobbered. Add another mechanic where the boss sends out waves of damage around the entire arena, forcing the players to scramble behind a shield or be wiped. THEN we get two waves of champion-level adds to distract the DPS and healer at the worst possible moments.
  • The final boss for Chapter II of Eternal Throne on veteran and master mode is insanely difficult compared to the other encounters in the different chapters. The boss has 2 elite bodyguards that will pull you around the room and stun you. The main boss himself is no laughing matter, he has a long channel that will one-shot you if you don't stop him fast enough. Additionally, he has a cone attack that will do heavy damage to you and your companion if you don't interrupt him fast enough. If your companion is unfortunate enough to be standing in his rocket attack, she will die in a few hits. The overall damage the bosses dish out could burn down you and your companion easily if you are not geared enough.
  • Vaylin at the end of Eternal Throne. You have no companion^note Assuming the light side decision to free Lord Dramath from his prison is taken, no other source of healing except for a sporadically-appearing battlefield effect that wanders around, and she likes to hit you with a high-damage stun-lock while her one-hit-kill ability is charging. Melee characters especially will spend more time running out of her damage fields than actually fighting, and she has a huge health pool that makes the fight take forever even after you have it figured out. It's by far the hardest boss fight in either of the Knights of the... expansions; the actual final boss is a cakewalk by comparison.
  • The Network Controllers on Iokath aren't terribly difficult, but seem to be deliberately designed to be aggravating. Three bosses spawn, and while they don't do much damage, the two on the sides shield themselves and the central boss until you retrieve an orb from near one of them and put it in a slot farther away, which stuns the droid, drops its shields, and lets you damage it. Not too bad by itself, but all three have tow cable attacks that can yank you away from any objective and to a boss (who's probably shielded so you can't damage it), freeze rays that lock you down for several seconds, and healthy amounts of HP. It's like they were trying to create the platonic ideal of Fake Longevity. Mercifully, once you take down the two side droids, the main boss goes down, too.
  • The Lord of Agony is the final obstacle between you and unlocking HK-51, and by god he is going to make you earn that assassin droid. Before you even reach him, you have to go through a grueling gauntlet of Champion-level enemies, and when you finally do get to him, he possesses hard hitting attacks and massive AoE effects.
  • The Ancient Threat on Yavin 4 is a Superboss by design, but what makes it an especially big pain in the ass is all the hoops you have to jump through to unlock the fight. You have to first go to Tatooine and find a Tome of Eldritch Lore to get a buff from it, then hunt down four Sith spirits in the jungle and get their buffs, then track down four talismans corresponding to each of the four ghosts, and only then can you even summon the boss—who as previously mentioned is so tough you're recommended to get an operations group of two dozen together. The achievement and title for beating the Ancient Threat is consequently one of the rarest in the game.
• That One Level:
  • Taris is loathed, particularly by the Republic players, who get to experience it at lower levels. Why, you ask? Rakghouls, everywhere. Everywhere. To say nothing of how, if you had any pride in what you accomplished on Taris as a Republic player, as an Imperial player you get to reverse everything good you did on that planet. Almost literally, every mission you undertake as an Imperial is a direct counterpoint to one you did as a Republic player. In short, as a Republic character, you dig a hole. As an Imperial player, you fill it. Republic players will also believe that they have completed all the quests on the planet when they discover they've opened a bonus quest strand in a new zone populated by more enemies.
  • On Hoth the boredom of running vast distances from one quest to another is compounded by the lack of any scenery besides endless snow.
  • Also, Belsavis is often disliked due to how incredibly long it is, both in terms of size and mission design. The same can also be said of Alderaan, which isn't quite as long a mission slog to get through, but is so sprawling takes roughly 3 minutes to load into even on high-end machines.
    • Any class that has to infiltrate House Rist on Alderaan will quickly learn to hate it, particularly the Inquisitor, whose fight at the end is rather challenging. And failure at any point means trekking all the way back through...
  • Gorma-Koss is easily the biggest and most sprawling area on Voss, and that combined with the area being full of Gormak and the fact that the mission objectives are scattered throughout the map can make it an absolute slog to get through
  • Imperial Balmorra provokes a similar reaction. Particularly the bonus series, which is an unfortunate combination of lengthy and relatively challenging for its level. And the colicoids, dear Lord, the colicoids...
  • Colicoid War Games, mainly because the turret and maze sections require coordination that pick-up groups are unlikely to have. Apparently BW agreed, because they've since nerfed this fight.
  • Corellia; the map is very large and filled with linear corridors that have unavoidable mobs, there are a few dead ends as well. The whole planet feels like a Marathon Level.
  • The Space Combat mission called "Taspan Ambush". Where do we even begin? You have to escort a shuttle carrying a Republic defector from point A to Point B. Just like your very first space mission. Sounds easy right? Except this time, aside from the dozens of starfighters, there's ten Republic frigates chasing this shuttle, not just engaged in a brawl with the Imperial fleet sent to recover it. You have scant seconds to disable all of the turrets (all 8 of them) in all of the frigates (all 10 of them) before they leave the shuttle too damaged to survive the massive ambush that awaits in the asteroid belt. What makes this so frustrating is that in most other space missions, success or failure depends solely on your ability to dodge enemy shots, and shoot accurately. But on here, ships ignore you completely, and focus exclusively on the shuttle. As if this wasn't enough, FRIENDLY FIRE IS ENABLED. That's right, if you don't aim carefully, your own blasters will reduce the health of the shuttle.
  • Cha Raaba Assault (and its Republic mirror, Thanium Disruption), is considered the hardest Heroic Space Mission by far. Even with full upgrades, it's possible to die in seconds if you slip up. It doesn't help that the first two minutes of the mission is just shooting down two heavy fighters and dodging asteroids, with the fighters probably not taking up more than a minute of your time.
  • Tatooine, for both factions, is very long and very boring. It's a little better since they lowered the level requirements for mounts, but it still takes several minutes to travel between encounters.
  • Many, many former Heroic 4 missions could qualify. Almost all of the mobs were elite, could kill in 2-3 hits, and at times it could be very hard to find a group of 4 in contrast to just one other person to run it with you. (To say nothing of how you could often solo Heroic 2s when they still gave their full experience reward if you and your NPC companion had good enough gear or were a couple levels higher.) They got even harder if the group didn't have any healers, as they would have no way to heal without companions, who are of course dismissed once the group is full and had to rely on proper teamwork and dishing out more damage before the enemy mobs killed them.
  • Among Flashpoints, Blood Hunt is universally hated; the most obvious fault is that it's an extreme strain on lower-end computers, but the main issue is the second boss, Jos and Valk Beroya, who also count as That One Boss. Even on Tactical mode, the fight is long, both fighters put out insane damage and CCs, and they have a knockback they can use to easily one-shot you if you're too close to the edge of the arena. To make matters worse, the healing stations are conveniently stationed around the edges of the arena so the bosses might knock you off if you try to heal the group. It's no better on Hard mode, where the first boss is a massive DPS check.
  • The Seeker Droid and Macrobinocular questlines contain Heroic 4 missions that haven't been scaled down post-4.0 so that they can be soloed, nor can they be shared. Because the questline is old (from 2013-ish), anyone who completed it did so years ago, meaning that the chances of you finding three other people for "Dark Design" and "Uprooting the Last Seed" are slim-to-none. You're better off simply never starting the quests.
  • Chapter X of Fallen Empire is mostly hated by the player-base due to it being a Marathon Level with lots of unskippable and repetitive Skytrooper encounters that are only there to make the chapter longer. On Veteran or Master Mode, it is much worse when you encounter a Dual Boss that dishes out insane amounts of damage to you and your companion. In addition to several unavoidable encounters with Zakuul Knights that can deal heavy amounts of damage and could kill you in a few hits on Master Mode.
  • Chapter II of Eternal Throne is one of the hardest chapters on Veteran and Master difficulty. The first boss you face is a group of Jungle Beast that spawns a group of adds and one has an ability that will instantly kill you if you are below 30% health. The second boss can be really annoying for melee classes due to the probes that can slow you down and prevent you from leaping. In addition, there are droids that slowly cast strong attacks and the boss itself can deal heavy damage and stun-lock you as well. The third boss is where you have to face the mercenary leader along with two elite guards. The guards like to stun and pull you around while the leader deals AOEs that could kill your companion if you are not careful.
  • "The Traitor Among The Chiss" flashpoint is disliked due to the length of the flashpoint and the excessive mob encounters. The enemies also love to stun you and it is very easy to accidentally aggro multiple mobs. It doesn't help that the bosses have LOTS of HP which makes the fights more tedious.
• That One Side Quest:
  • "The Dissonance Wave" mission in the Makeb Bonus Series. This quest is a Marathon Level which involves going to three different bases that are infested with enemies and activating each drill. Traveling there can be tedious since there are mobs everywhere that could easily knock you off your mount.
  • The companion recruitment missions in Fallen Empire.
    • Assembling some resources or killing a few creatures is one thing, but a PvE player might have a real bad taste about a comp that demands you play 20 warzones (Major Pierce for Imperials, M1-4X for the Republic).
    • "A Kindly Old Monster" alliance mission in the Fallen Empire expansion. The first stage of the quest involves gathering at least a thousand crafting materials for him. After that, you have to wait for an event that shows up every few months to progress through the mission.
  • "The Meek and the Mighty" on Iokath involves piloting a Mouse Droid underneath a walker and detonating it. It is a Stealth-Based Mission since you can easily be destroyed by the mobs. When you reach the walker, it can easily detect you and kill you in a few hits. To make matters worse, the self-destruct ability doesn't always kill the walker. And if the Mouse Droid is destroyed, you have to spend power shards to use it again.
  • "Search and Rescue". By the time you find this quest, you've likely been coasting through the Heroic missions with just you and your companion, even if the mobs are quite tougher than usual. But this Heroic is here to slap you across the face and remind you that, yes, sometimes you really do need the recommended amount of players even with a companion for Heroics. Unlike virtually every other Heroic you've done to this point, "Search and Rescue" pits you against a long, grueling gauntlet of gold elite and white elite mobs in tight clusters of at least four or five, and even just one of them is capable of shredding your health even at max level.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many fans considered this true of the Light Side incarnation of Jaesa Willsaam, bemoaning the fact that she has to be turned to the Dark Side in order to be romanced. Particularly since her recruitment path actually makes it a plot point that Jaesa decided to join a Light Side Sith Warrior after realizing that Dark Is Not Evil and that the Jedi are not always the paragons they claim to be. The second most common complaint about Jaesa is that both of her personalities are extreme. LS Jaesa is essentially a Jedi who won't abide any dark decisions. DS Jaesa is a psychopath who won't abide any light decisions. It's an odd state of affairs for someone whose unique gift is being able to know that people are putting on false fronts or trying too hard. This is made even worse when you compare her to the companion most similar to her, Ashara Zavros, whose entire character arc focuses on realizing that morality isn't black and white and can't just be boiled down to Light Side and Dark Side.
  • The companions in general due to Jaesa, who is the ONLY one of the about 2 dozen companions altogether across whose personality can be affected by the player's actions much (something present in many of BioWare's other games). Being able to corrupt even the nicest of these characters and redeem even the most evil had lots of potential that was squandered.
  • Kira Carsen and Lord Scourge, the two characters who have the deepest personal connection to the Sith Emperor, are among the few companions who reappeared in neither Fallen Empire nor Eternal Throne, despite the story of the game being about the Emperor returning with another empire to finish the job. The fact that the Outlander — especially if they are the Knight, who canonically killed Vitiate the first time — is playing host to the Emperor's disembodied spirit would have been a great place for Kira to provide personal insight, but alas, there's barely a trace of her across both expansions. This got ameliorated a bit when they finally did return in Onslaught – they were off on a mission to destroy Vitiate's original body, which was as crucial to him being Killed Off for Real as the Outlander's actions.
  • Ditto Ashara Zavros, whose very personal journey to find her own way to view and use the Force should have fit quite well into the Zakuul storyline, particularly with regards to the Scions. The Aborted Arc left anything they'd possibly planned to do with her on the cutting room floor, and Ashara just randomly turns up on Voss after all the fighting is over instead.
  • Risha the Smuggler companion. Not only is she a resourceful and well-connected crime lady who would arguably be better suited to scrounge up credits and contacts in the expansions than Gault, more of "Get Rich Quick" Con Man wanted by the entire criminal underworld for his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, but due to Risha's past of being close as sisters with Vette, many felt the writers squandered the opportunity for the two to reunite. Now that Vette could have been Killed Off for Real in Eternal Throne and Risha returns only if the Outlander is a Smuggler, it's doubtful the two will ever reunite. Not to mention the writers unceremoniously dropped a bridge on Dubrillion, which many felt had the potential for future stories.
  • It's easy to feel that Mentor from Directive 7, with his plans and motivations, deserves far more than a single lousy flashpoint.
  • Lampshaded with Tharan Cedrax, who complains about all the xenotech he missed the chance to study due to not returning until Onslaught.
  • Depending on which side of the HUD's Force toggle the Smuggler clicks on, either Nariel or Vaverone could have been just as good of a companion as Guss.
  • Lord Praven in the Jedi Knight story. He's a far cry from his Chaotic Evil Sith brethren, who can possibly be convinced to join the Jedi Order. Perhaps he could've made a good foil to the Knight's other padawan, being more reserved and honorable compared to Kira's laid back and playful nature. Yet, he leaves the story after Tatooine, should he be spared, and only appears briefly on Corellia (still clad in Sith attire, too).
  • Darth Lachris is a minor fan favorite Sith Lord who appears during the Imperial Balmorra storyline. In addition to being Darth Marr's apprentice, she's also rather affable, attractive and has a keen mind for strategy. While Lachris does appear as an antagonist for the Jedi Consular on the same world, she appears so briefly and doesn't even get to show off her personality during her two interactions with the player. She's essentially The Ghost for most of the planet, so you can be forgiven for forgetting that she was even involved.
  • Ranna Tao'Ven, a young female Twi'lek from the opening Tython section of the Jedi Knight story. Some would have liked to see her continue on as a companion. Especially when the set-up for a character arc was there to see Ranna grow into the role of Matriarch for her people following the death of her mother. The Jedi Knight can even start a romance with Ranna, but it's rushed through and forgotten about just as quickly as it was started.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Later on in the Bounty Hunter storyline, the Hunter encounters a group of Republic aligned Bounty Hunters who kidnap one of their companions to lure them into a trap. This group could have been very interesting and compelling adversaries, being a group of fellow hunters who have chosen to fight for the other side. However, none of these hunters or their group ever appear or are even brought up again after this encounter.
  • As discussed elsewhere, the Smuggler storyline involves very little actual smuggling. Worse, Acts 2 and 3 make you a Republic privateer (likely against your will), and increasingly ties your personal story to the Republic war effort, even if you're Heroic Neutral or Dark Side. This, despite one of the Smuggler class's main draws being a snarky and irreverent freelancer and outlaw who's just out to have fun and/or make credits. Even the Bounty Hunter class enjoys more agency apart from helping the Imperial war effort!
  • At the end of Act 1 of the Jedi Consular story, you encounter the mysterious Parkanas whom the infected Jedi Masters keep ranting about, who turns out to be a former padawan they Left for Dead to save their own skins years ago, whose hatred left him vulnerable to a Dark Side Force ghost. If spared, he cryptically warns that no matter how benevolent the Jedi's teachings or how useful you are to them, you could end up discarded like him. This would make an interesting premise to build on, but instead Act 2 and 3 shifts over to a Gondor Calls for Aid plot, and the Jedi Order's benevolence is never brought into question again.
  • Act 2 of the Imperial Agent's story ends with Watcher X being the only person in the galaxy to know Cipher Nine's new brainwashing trigger phrase. There are any number of things that could have been done with this later, but the Agent's brainwashing is seldom referred to ever again. Of course, it is quite possible that the agent's conversations with him are purely in the agent's own mind, with Watcher X being a manifestation of the agent's subconscious.
  • The Alliance, as of 5.9 lost the Gravestone and the Gemini Fleet, and the developers announced they're going back to Republic versus Empire, making most of the plotline All for Nothing. Many players on the forums remark that they feel that this is a missed opportunity to Take a Third Option. In this case, the writers wrote themselves into a hole — the Eternal Fleet being a nigh indestructible armada of super-advanced warships and the Gravestone being the only ship in the known Galaxy capable of destroying the ships generally meant any possible story would begin and end with the Alliance curbstomping any opposition. This ties into a larger Broken Base in Star Wars: whether the main conflict should stay with Lightsiders versus Darksiders, or whether conflicts with third parties (e.g. Yuuzhan Vong, Killiks, Nihil) are a valid change of pace, and whether anything should change long-term about the primary conflict because of their involvement.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: 4.0 and 5.0 were notorious for making some major changes to the game that were not well received by the community. 4.0 removed lots of content including some quest-givers, achievements, mounts, cutscenes, armor sets, and some stronghold decorations in order to streamline the game. 5.0 changed and removed abilities for some of the classes in addition to implementing a new gearing system which was widely loathed among the player-base.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: In Fallen Empire, Kaliyo's plan to bomb Zakuul's capital city is clearly meant to be seen as horrifically evil, and in-game is treated as a major dark side act that has serious consequences for the player all the way into Eternal Throne. The problem is that, by this point in the story, Zakuul's society has been portrayed as so cartoonishly evil and decadent that many players felt that Kaliyo's extreme actions were jusitified.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Voss. At first they seem extremely inoffensive, mostly just being a very mystical, condescending and sheltered people. It's their relationship with the Gormak where they cross the line into unlikable depending on your stance. As much as the story tries to frame the Gormak as evil race of savage monsters they mostly just do what the Voss do, just without all the extra stuff about adhereing to Mystics. Maybe. The Voss hate the Gormak to the point where they want to wipe them all out, to the very last. They won't even allow the Gormak to leave in that huge spaceship they're building because they believe that, according to prophecy, the fate of the Gormak is to be wiped out on Voss. So in addition to be jerks to the player character, the Voss are also genocidal maniacs that are embroiled in a massive race war they have no interest in ending anytime soon.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Treek is female, but some players refer to her as "him." Admittedly, Ewoks don't have just a whole lot of distinguishing sexual characteristics, so it can be hard to tell.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The game's engine doesn't allow for many cinematics, but the Hallucination scene in the Imperial Agent Storyline looks really good.
• The Woobie:
  • Mako. Everybody she knows (BH and crew excluded) seems to get killed. She's emotionally strong enough to avert Break the Cutie, however... at least until Knights of the Fallen Empire, where your own apparent death leads to her quitting the bounty hunter lifestyle, saying that all it has ever done is take away the people she cares about.
  • Senya would also qualify, as she gets brutally separated from her daughter Vaylin by Valkorion after her daughter accidentally killed several guards in a sparring match. When she tried to rescue her she did not want to rescued. When she chose to leave Valkorian, her sons laughed at her and chose to stay. When Arcann and Vaylin took over and became tyrants, one could only imagine the amount of guilt she would have when her children have became monsters. It gets worse when she learned that Thexan was killed by the hands of Arcann.
  • Eleena Daru. She was originally a slave in the slave pens on Geonosis serving a master who she had been a slave to until her late teens had heavily abused her until she got rescued by a Sith. But the Sith is Darth Malgus who sincerely loved her, and fought in battles together. But he felt forced to kill her after one of his rivals used her as leverage against him.
• Woobie Species: The Evocii. They've lost their homeworld, Evocar, to the Hutt species and witnessed its transformation from an idyllic, green planet into a Crapsack World ruled by ganglords. They are routinely slaughtered as part of attempts to completely stomp the spirit out of them, and then in one Republic mission on Nar Shaddaa you are required to stop the Imperials from rounding up refugees in their camps and throwing them into an incinerator a la Auschwitz. It's even lampshaded by a pilot close to the spaceport for Republic players, who pities one of the desperate refugees for their species' history of discrimination.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Sith Inquisitor players frequently hid their helmet slot just because a lot of the helmets for their class are basically putting their head into a hermetically sealed ball with almost no kinds of facial features. One wonders how they (or Darth Baras for that matter) don't suffocate. Kira Carson says it best:
  Kira Carson: "Have you seen what those Sith are wearing? It's like every fashion designer in the galaxy joined the dark side."
  • Her comment also points out that, until the Cartel Market arrived, almost all the good-looking outfits were Imperial ones, with Jedi almost invariably being in drab brown robes, Troopers having only variations on knockoff clone/stormtrooper armor, and Smugglers falling victim to Rummage Sale Reject.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Enslaving and killing sapient humanoid species is wrong. Enslaving and killing "mindless animals" (non-sapient, non-humanoid aliens) and droids is almost always depicted as okay, even by the staunchest Light Side characters.
  • Inverted interestingly in an early Empire quest where you are told to look for a squad of troopers, and when you do you see they are dead and their personalities had been uploaded inside of droids and are in agony. Enslaving them and sending them back to their captain is the dark side option, hitting their kill switch to put them out of their misery is the light side option. Of course, it helps that they were once human...
  • Meanwhile, the Republic's standard practice of regularly memory-wiping all droids to keep them from developing long-term memories, personalities, or sentience (like T-7 in the Jedi Knight story) is barely touched upon, and any character from both factions who shows attachment to a droid is treated as a weirdo by all other characters, even by the most dedicated LS protagonist.^note In the Jedi Knight story, Leeha Narezz is treated as "eccentric" for thinking that if un-wiped droids can develop sentience then they can develop Force sensitivity, with even the most supportive reply from the Jedi Knight being an awkward, non-commital admission that it MIGHT be possible, even though their droid companion T-7 is proof that droids can develop personality and sentience. The Smuggler can also encounter another privateer on Balmorra who actually considers his protocol droid to be a friend and even gave said droid a nickname. Even the nicest comment from said Smuggler is to mock him over it. It makes the Republic's condemnation of Imperials for treating droids as Cannon Fodder downright hypocritical.