Class vs job?

[LineageRazor]

Jobs are more exotic in comparison, and far less common. The dragoons, for example, are Ishgard's special forces, and canonically, only about 10 are still alive in the city today. Similarly, paladins are supposed to be part of the Sultansworn, the personal guard of Ul'dah's royal family. Summoners were as good as extinct until A Realm Reborn, until you, the WoL, revived the ancient Allagan art, as was the art of scholarly Nymian magic.

Whenever I run into another player on a supposedly "rare" job like WHM, my personal rationalization is that they aren't REALLY a WHM, but someone else who's learned the ways of White Magic through some independent means. He may even have a Soulstone, but it isn't E-Towa-Cant's! :P

The thing to remember is that the classes are artefacts from the 1.0 version of FFXIV, the original roles that launched with the game. For better or worse, that is the legacy inherited by today's FFXIV.

I think the original intention was for the classes to be more generalised than the specialised "jobs", and this was reflected in the greater number of "role skills" that classes could carry compared to jobs.

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the introduction of "Jobs" something that Yoshi P introduced into the game? And that the original classes were intended to be the actual playable roles, not just a stopgap before the "real" jobs?

It was my understanding that Tanaka wanted to go a different route than FFXI (which provided MMO versions of classic FFXI jobs from across many games) and create an entirely (mostly) new assortment of classes. Yoshi, in order to create appeal for the failing game, brought back the classic jobs to attract the Final Fantasy fans.

Speaking as someone who never actually played 1.0, for all the problems the game had, the original class system was INTERESTING, if nothing else. Now it is just a vestige. There were some half-hearted efforts to make it relevant in the early days of ARR (the cross-class flexibility) but nowadays serves only as something to get away from at the earliest possible.

[Gwaeron]

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the introduction of "Jobs" something that Yoshi P introduced into the game? And that the original classes were intended to be the actual playable roles, not just a stopgap before the "real" jobs?

Also worth mentioning, that even after Yoshida took over, while they did add some gear with the job listed as "Required", they also added gear with classes listed as "Required". For example, look up Astrolabe, Avengers or Rampager on http://ffxiv.mozk-tabetai.com/
So the idea seems to have been for them to exist in parallel even after the introduction of jobs.