Star Wars: The Old Republic Previews

IGN and Joystiq have cranked out their own GDC-based previews of Star Wars: The Old Republic, with both articles focusing on the game’s trooper class, as expected. From the former:

The trooper is all about firefights. It’s not a stealth or cover-based class, and it lacks the panache of the lightsaber users, but the trooper still has an appeal based solely on the class’s ability to deal lots of damage from a great distance. Like the other classes, the trooper builds up action points with basic attacks and then unleashes more powerful abilities as required.

The basic trooper shot, the Hammer Shot, is a quick blast that builds up AP. From there you can launch rifle grenades to take out groups of enemies or toss a sticky grenade and watch in delight as your target frantically waves his arms around trying to get rid of the bomb before it explodes. Somehow they never seem to get it off in time. Enemies that get too close to the trooper will get a nice rifle-butt to the face, which sends them reeling and sets them up for a quick blaster shot. If the situation gets particularly desperate, you can even activate a full auto ability that expends all your action points in a rapid fire attack on your target.

And an excerpt from the latter:

If The Old Republic’s other classes are this action-centric, I could easily see this game becoming a big hit with the non-MMO-playing crowd. It’s remarkably accessible — at the GDC preview event, LucasArts basically plunked me down in front of a computer with little instruction on how to play. Everything just feels natural, looks extremely polished and moves along at a faster pace than any other online RPG I’ve ever played.

For example, one neat feature I saw for the first time during this demo was a set of quests you automatically acquire once you start fulfilling their requirements. These are meant to complement the main story quests, awarding you items and experience for killing a number of a certain type of enemy. It looks to be a clever response to a fairly annoying hassle every MMORPG has made its players undergo.