SW:TOR "highly derivative" of WOW
Analyst unimpressed with E3 hands-on.
Doug Creutz, senior research analyst at Cowen and Company, has given a withering verdict on upcoming MMO behemoth Star Wars: The Old Republic, describing the game as "highly derivative" of World of Warcraft.
"We got hands-on time with the game, and were largely unimpressed," he said in the firm's E3 report, reported by our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz.
"Despite promises from EA/Bioware that the title represents a major step forward in MMO design, what we saw was essentially a World of Warcraft clone with Star Wars character skins and the BioWare RPG nice/nasty dialogue tree mechanism bolted on for non-player character conversations."
The analyst was also left disappointed with the game's visuals, describing them as "competent, but hardly breathtaking", although allowances were made for the desert setting of the demonstration.
With EA remaining tight-lipped over the release date, the firm believes that the title will now slip into 2012 and that this delay is related to the recent drop in EA's share price.