Visit SWTOR.com where Damion Schubert, Principal Lead Combat Designer for The Old Republic, discusses the creation of the Trooper class. Excerpt below:

It was a tense day in the combat design pit. We had completed the first pass of our new character class, the Republic Trooper, and had made it available for the team to play. As part of the process of class development, we run internal playtests and gather feedback from volunteers who offer their time. After our first such playtest with the Trooper, we anxiously gathered around a computer, watching survey results trickle in. We were somewhat nervous. The Trooper is a true design challenge. He has no Force powers to lean on; he doesn’t have a wide array of sexy lightsaber moves. While heavily armored, we didn’t want that armor to provide the Swiss army knife flexibility built into the Bounty Hunter’s power suit. The Trooper is simpler–he has a really big gun and a variety of ways to wreak havoc with it. How would people respond?

They responded well–far better than we imagined, in fact. The scores that day were the highest we had seen to date. It turns out there are a lot of people who like to blow things up. And that’s what the Trooper does best."