Guy Jackson said:
I haven't played an MMO since Guild Wars in 2005 so I don't know what the current standard is, but if what you say is true then MMO animations haven't improved at all in the last 6 years! I guess in MMO land, quantity (of content) still rules over quality.
I never played Guild Wars, so I can't compare, but technically, the passage of time has nothing to do with quality of animation. Either your animators do well or they don't. For example, Toy Story 3's animation isn't necessarily better than Beauty and the Beast simply because it came out 19 years later. The rest of the graphics do update at steady rates, but the animation techniques (in terms of the 12 principles) don't change much through the decades.
Point is, I look at these animations and they're on par with WoW or the more recent Rift, if not better. As I mentioned, there is a little weirdness when animations have to interact, like saber clashes and blocking blaster bolts, but that's because of the kind of calculations that go into syncing up those animation clips. They can't always ease in perfectly and coming out of a run, into a slash, followed by dynamically blocking blaster bolts won't look perfect regardless of the quality of each clip or cycle. Anytime animations have to be dynamically queued up there's going to be some oddness, but overall the quality is good despite those minor hiccups.