I'm going to be completely honest here. New mages are probably a bit stronger codedly (in most cases), but the removal of full magickers started my slow slide to stop playing. I've thought about this quite a bit and it's all down to the time investment. Full guild magickers let me roll up a PC, do a moderate amount of spell training and be able to jump into the game with a useful playable PC.
I just don't have the time to grind out mundane skillset after mundane skillset anymore. And yes, I know lots of you enjoy playing social PCs who don't use many skills and the like, but I do not.
Grinding the mundane skillset, combat and weapon stuff especially, has literally made me swear I'll -never- play another combat based class. Ever again.
And given the fact you can now have a wealth of mundane skills PLUS be a magicker and avoid the brutal, 20, 30, 40, 50... real life day grind... is a boon. You can do more. Accomplish more. Etc, etc.
Tangent aside, another thing I do miss about Full Elementalist. While they are more powerful in some degrees, they are worse overall (re: sniffing, lack of stuff to do in a coded sense, etc)... That said, the ROLEPLAY... and CHARACTERS... I've seen played by Full Elementalist over the few years I saw them, was...
Astounding.
A well played magicker (full elementals), who had soooo many thematic, world, and coded limitations put up against them (rightly so)... out-shined everyone. They made for truly fascinating roleplay and were a true pleasure to watch evolve and try to find their way in this harsh world.
I feel the new "magickers" are really just pimped out Rangers of old. Rangers with bags of tricks. b/c I'd wager, by and large the majority of the magickers who choose a class, pick one of the ranger-lite classes...
And that just makes everything for them easier - not requiring to delve into the struggle for survival both in the "I'm a witch" sense nor in the "I'm trying to survive in a brutal world".
Basically while we, as a player base, gained a lot of super cool options, that freed up a lot of things -- we lost something I think on the way to it.
And given that this game world, is really built on strict roles and limits. Classes / Hierarchy / Prejudice / Boundaries / Lines in the sand / Walls / Allegiances / etc... The current elementals options kind... detract from that.
I may be wrong (likely am). But it's an interesting idea about full elementalists existing once again.
Maybe back to what they were. Elementalist + Subclass (which given the current subclasses, is already pretty amazing given the options offered).