Quote Originally Posted by Mjollnir View Post
I'm firmly in the camp of there being a new class to underlay Scholar with the respective guild either in one of the starting cities or one of the other, expanded, settlements around Eorzea.

I did wonder about the 8-slot job crystal window. My take that the Beta will not have the 9th job ready and the 9th slot will be added in when SCH or SMN is attainable. Though that seems a little tenuous. Maybe when the chest was designed, only 8 jobs were confirmed and the whole SCH thing is a relatively recent addition.
I'm also leaning towards there being a new class, but if I'm being totally honest I can't tell how much I'm being biased by the fact that I want a new class. I don't think they'll make two jobs from the same class because I think it'd be messy any way I can imagine they'd implement it. ...But then again I don't want them to make two jobs from the same class because I think it'd be messy any way I can imagine they'd implement it. So I might be having a little trouble keeping the two separate.

I believe it's been confirmed 100% that the beta will also not have the 8th job ready. Both SMN and SCH have been announced "for launch." I'm trying not to read to much into it, though, and I think your second suggestion is probably right. There will be 9 job slots, there just aren't at the moment. It's the developer's build after all, they don't need to get everything implemented at the same time like they'd have to if players were on the server.

Quote Originally Posted by Fantasia View Post
Methinks that they've changed the classes, so that

ACN > SCH
EVK > SMN

(EVK = Evoker)

Which isn't really that difficult to edit at this stage in development, and would also explain why the SCH is shown holding a Grimoire (if it's not a Tome) whereas the SMN doesn't appear to be using a weapon at all yet. But that's just my 2 cents.

As you were.
I did notice that the new concept art had every job carrying its weapon with the exception of SMN, which appears unarmed. The actual naming of the mage classes hasn't made much sense to me from the beginning. Ignoring scholar, it seems to me it should've gone (in name only):

CNJ -> SMN [To conjure something and to summon something isn't all that different. EVK works too.]
ACN -> BLM [Arcane arts, black magic, whatever. It works for SMN as well, but I think CNJ works better.]
THM -> WHM [Thaumaturgey being a term which refers specifically to miracle-like magic. Certainly something closer associated with WHMs than BLMs.]

Ignoring the fact that I don't think they name their mage classes well, I'm sort of skeptical that the class they announced for SMN is going to be moved to a different job (instead of SMN). If there's a unique class associated with SCH, my money is still on a Tactician.