I am confused by what Zenimax has said about the class system. Here is my understanding.

1. Players start as 1 of 4 classes.

2. Each class will start with a various additional abilities in armor or weapons.

3. Classes do not dictate what you can wear or arm yourself with.

4. New abilities are gained through using weapons or armor

5. Also new abilities are gained through quest lines such as the Mages Guild.

Its seems that after the first couple of levels class has no bearing on the player. Say I start as a mage but I use two handed swords and heavy armor and complete quest lines such as the fighters guild. As such I become a plate wearing melee character.

You pick a class, and (as an example purely) your skills are all tied to your equipped weapon @ level 1. As you level you gain abilities also from your chosen class, as well as the ability to unlock them from the paths and quest lines. Armor has no bearing regardless of class.

That's about my understanding about it, i can't wait to see what more info we get about it. though i know you can make multiple roles for your self, as in you can have your skills and gear set up to heal and then change that gear and skill you have equipped and be a tank, the major factor at that point would be the points you put in health stamina or magica while leveling.

did you ever play any elder scrolls?

Classes provide both special passive abilities and attacks that can't be learned from weapon or armor masteries. So in your example where you rolled a sorcerer and went to learn two handed swords. You still learn an ability called (I think it's called lightning form) that is a pretty good survivle cooldown that is only available to that class. You could build a custom class that doesn't use any of the class abilities at all and just uses the weapon armor or other skill trees. But classes give you a special way to modify and either reinforce the specific archtype you're trying to build or do a hybrid class.

Keep in mind that class abilities don't require any specific equipment or weapons to be equipped to use them as well, which weapons and armors do.

Correct, class is only a theme that adds some flavour of unique-ness, you can choose to ignore your class completely. Otherwise, its Elder Scrolls game, you do whatever you want

Your class of choice gives you certain abilities other classes don't have.

You just need to be clever in figuring out how to best use these abilities to support the role you play as.

As an example;

Let's just assume that Sorcerers get a "blink" type of ability.

You want to play a melee tank Sorcerer.

You can use "blink" while tanking when a really big hit is coming your way and completely avoid the damage instead of soaking it in.