This is just my personal impression: MMOs in general seem to be drifting (leaping?) to every character being comparable to every other. I remember the old days when my Meat-Shield of a tank could svck up more damage than anybody but his DPS blew sticky wet marshmallow chunks - but that was the point, right? I was expected to be a master of Aggro, not one of the flame-slinging DPS gunners. But then came the waves of QQ like why plate-covered damage sponges didn't stealth like a thief or throw heat like a clothie mage. Pretty soon thieves were stealth-tanking and tanks are doing whirlwind-o-death axe attacks. Every class did everything pretty much equally. On the good side, it cut down on "we can't raid because we don't have a tank" (or healer, or whatever) but -- and maybe this is just me -- it seems like characters lost their distinctiveness. I didn't give a hoot about failing to out-DPS the healer as long as nobody in my party died; I had a job and I was fairly good at it.

What do y'all think? Guild Wars 2 declared the death of the Holy Trinity (healer/tank/deeps) as a great thing, but personally I kinda liked some give-and-take with abilities. Will the TESO system lead players to create more generalist characters or more specialized builds? Or will it (and to me this would be asweome) be flexible enough to let players choose for themselves? Could the idea of "class" simply fade away in the MMO model and let us simply choose from a wide array of skills like we do in Skyrim?

As a side question: Would an easy re-spec capability make it easier for groups to configure on-the-fly so I might want to tank one day but deeps another on the same character?

Jus' pondering, wondered what everybody else thought. Going nuts with anticipation...

Do you want to know what I think of GuildWars 2's steps? Crap on it.
ArenaNet experienced a huge lack of healers in their prequel GuildWars 2. Therefore they didn't want to bound groups to healers. But this was the wrong step because they left a gap. They transformed the idea of a mmorpg into a singleplayer where all you have to do is: Saving your own hide if needed. At least "area healing" or something like this is just poor supportive and won't help a groupmate pretty much if you're just one group.

http://tamrielfoundry.com/development-faq/
The Elder Scrolls Online will have a class system where you are able to spam your g*dd*mn heal if you want to. If you want to.
If you want to you can even combine heal and attack abilities like in GuildWars 2. As Zenimax presented their game you'll be able to play a fullhealer and even hybrid. I think you'll also be able to create your meatshield warrior with a shield which looks like an iron-door.
It sounds like Zenimax won't left that gap since usual skills won't be cooldown based and creating place even for old playstyles like holy trinity.

I *hate* it when games (for PvP balance) make all characters similar to each other.

examples:
- Every char. can AOE
- Every char. can use frequent interupts

Another thing that makes me stay away from many games is respecs. I even dislike dualspecs. Over the years, I've noticed a move to make games easier, more forgiving. I for one miss the old days that would lock you into your character build. I am hoping that this game will not allow players to respec at will if at all. I am hoping that this game will allow people to fit what ever niche they desire. Want to be a full out healer? How about a DPS/secondary healer. Or an offtank/healer. What ever our choice, I would love to see it implemented and locked in. (with the exception of rolling back the last point spent incase of a mistake or being given points back because of major game changes due to a massive skill patch).

Anyhow I am intrigued by the skill system and can't wait to see how it works.