"However, and crucially, there is this huge amount of story in there, with every line of dialogue recorded, and genuine moral choices to be made, (Swtor Credits)with long-reaching consequences on how you experience the world," he told the BBC.
'Distinctive and alternative'
"WoW has never offered anything close to that," he said. "And playing dark side, you can do some horrible things, which is fantastic."
He said there was an obvious tension in the game between the involving, story-driven solo titles that its creator Bioware is best known for and the populist multi-player experience required to attract subscribers and recoup development costs.
"I think there is a great deal that makes SWTOR distinctive and alternative enough to be interesting," he said, though he added that it was too early to say whether the game would be a hit.
Entrenched titles such as World of Warcraft will be big competition for SWTOR "I'm hedging my bets at this point, as anyone should in the early days of a new massively multi-player game," he said.
Joe Martin, games editor at Custom PC, was less impressed with his time testing the game.
Mr Martin said "glaring technical inconsistencies", such as the fact that lightsabers do not cut through anything, robbed the game of the attraction of its setting.
"Jedi are supposed to be rare, but a massively multi-player game is naturally going to be full of them, which robs them of their rarity and potence," he said.
While playing, Mr Martin was struck by the divide between the complex single-player content and what he dubbed the "MMO-style filler".
"All the talk about this being the first MMO to put storyline into an MMO conveniently skips the reason why single player and multi-player games operate as discrete entities," he said.
With SWTOR, publisher EA is hoping to tempt players away from well-known titles, such as WoW, which also charge a monthly fee.
But it will also have to outdo the many free-to-play online games titles that started out with monthly charges but have been forced to drop fees to survive.
The launch of SWTOR comes barely a week after the closure of the Star Wars: Galaxies - one of the pioneering online role-playing games.
