Gamer Escape: The next classes that are supposed to be coming are Arcanist and Musketeer. Are they going to make it in before 2.0? Is there anything you can tell us about that and the jobs they’ll get access too? I think I heard Arcanist will get access to a Geomancer job?
Yoshida: Currently the class balance is… there are a lot of attacker type classes and not enough caster classes.
So our first priority if we’re adding new classes, is to start with caster classes and the second would be to add a pet class. Because right now there are no pet classes. If you talk about MMOs almost all of them have their pet class and so we need a pet class and we want to beef up the choices on the casting class side. Those are our top priorities. After that we can think about adding new attacker classes.
The talk that’s going about saying that Arcanist and Musketeer are going to be next… those might not necessarily be the ones that are next. Yes they do appear in the scenarios and it looks like the foundations are there, but whether those will be the next ones or not, it again, depends more on… we’re looking at what the game needs rather than what’s already there. So if it means starting up something new so we can fill that, then yes, we’ll do that. As far as the job system and what jobs will be attached to them… we don’t know. As for the timing, we still don’t know if it’s going to be before 2.0. There’s a chance it could be before, and there’s a chance that it could be after.
As you know, the biggest problem with adding a new class is all the stuff you have to add with it. If you add a new class, you have to add a new job. When you add a new class and job, it means you have class and job quests and then you have class and job items and then you have battle balance and so it’s a lot of extra work. We first want to get the system with our current classes in place and balanced and once that’s done to a point we’re happy with, then the next step is adding those next classes. We have a list internally of what classes we’re thinking of and the jobs those go to. As for when they get done… that depends on the schedule. If everything works out then yes we’ll get these classes and jobs in sooner then hopefully you’re expecting.