A new class was the play. It's the safest, and easiest, route the devs could go to appease players. Spellcrafting was nearly complete and ready for a rollout in 2014. They scrapped it for who knows why, probably to use the assets elsewhere. I assume a lot of the spellcrafting animation was used on Warden, Necromancer, and possibly now the Arcanist. Perhaps with a 6th class, this one being the third pure Mage archetype class in the game, they can focus on something like Spellcrafting next. With a good balance of 6 classes to choose from, rather than expanding the roster of player choices with classes, they can expand EVERY class' ability roster with spellcrafting.

Though to be fair, zos did say that they were releasing an anticipated feature and a new system. The anticipated feature being a class, the new system which comes in the later half of the year could still be spellcrafting. It's unlikely. But still possible and thematically appropriate for the chapter. Alternatively, they said that this story would be a multi-year storyline, and if it continues with Hermeus Mora and secrets, spellcrafting could also come next year.

Vevvev wrote: »

I didn't care for spell crafting or a new class. I wanted something new for all my existing characters.

Also, spellcrafting is something for existing characters. You'd be able to make new skills for characters you have, and it would be open ended for Zos to add more spell and ability options to the system later, making for a much more open ended thing to work with than just a new skill line.

Olen_Mikko wrote: »

"Spellcraft?

Naaaa, let's create new class and make it broken op, so people can play all the quests for 19th time again and instawin pvp.

Okay okay, let's give them new map to explore, but not new new, so we can just copy an environment and same old plot.

They'll be happy anyway"

Bro… I’m crying. 😂