That’s not the point. An RPG involves one person. One person can play a squad based game alone. An MMORPG involves many people. Some may like damage more than tanking or healing more than damage. Some may prefer and do prefer a CC role.
No but I’d rather dungeons and raids be more dangerous on the pull than they are at present. I’d also like more specialization choices than simply tank / heal / dps.
You could have started the conversation with this. So I wouldn’t have wasted my time.
As an Iksar Shaman, I do not recall the term being applied like that.
Well, anecdotally it may have been called a few things but the definition of support is to hold something up. DPS with healing support is nothing new. Like said multiboxers make use of this quite often to do PvE content like dungeons. Having offheal support is actually a strength in some applications. No different than offheal tanking was in the days of TBC.
The roles themselves all exist to support the group but the difference is some specs cross multiple roles. Such that they are typically referred to as support classes.
Those are typically called hybrid classes.
Support classes exist to help perform the other roles execute those roles better.
I’m under the firm belief that legion killed new classes.
I know it can be skipped and you can lvl elsewhere but it seems foolish to have an entire expansions worth of content basically un-doable for a class.
I’m hopeful on the new spec front but even that I’m unsure of.
Don’t hold your breath on new classes I guess is my point.
Which off tanks and off healers do.
Which makes them support.
If that was an issue, it was just solved - simply grey out the option for Legion when levelling.
They don’t, though. Hybrids can fill in for their failures or inadequacies. Supports work to ensure they don’t fail in the first place, generally through buffs and debuffs.
Or heals or tanking or damage.
All roles have support purposes.
You’re broadening the term to uselessness. And again, yes, you are using the proper dictionary term.
It holds different connotations in the RPG world, though.
No actually I am not.
You can say pure tanks support the group and that’s true. You can also say balance druids primarily DPS but support heals.
It’s all support but it serves a somewhat different distinction in context. The prot warrior is primarily a tank. The prot paladin in TBC was not primarily a tank but an off tank which was a support role for tanking specifically.
Bards are coming! For all you Everquest vets out there, I expect to see some Rainbow Bards 
lolol
And block a class from an entire expansion? Doesnt seem right to me.
As it is balancing our current classes is a nightmare 90% of the time.
I just don’t support any new classes right now. Just about every fantasy is met through the ones we have. Idk if blizzard is under the same impression and if they want to prove me wrong/do it anyway I wouldn’t exactly be mad about it.
I just don’t want to see more classes have their play styles gutted, I don’t want more balancing issues than we already have, and I don’t want to see some classes being essentially excluded from an entire expansions worth of content.
If anyone is support, no one is.
Tanks are tanks.
Healers are healers.
Damage dealers are damage dealers.
Offtanks are offtanks.
Offhealers are offhealers.
Hybrids are hybrids.
All of these are standard terms, and all of them apply to WoW.
The support class is something separate. Something that has not existed in WoW since classic (and even then, arguable). This distinct type of gameplay is not supported by WoW. It has no support role, in the RPG usage of the term.
Consequently, I believe this is why we’ll never get Bard.
It isn’t a damage dealer.
It isn’t a tank.
It isn’t even a healer.
It’s a support class. And WoW does not support that role.
You can head there at 50 like anyone else. They could also just toss a solid weapon or a freebie heirloom on the intro quest and call it a day, but greying out the option would be much more simple.
And how would the intro work? Your first set of quests is working with your orderhall, there are whole quest chains, hub zones, mission board quests, etc they’d be locked out of.
Sure they can go do the quests. But there is still a lot of content they miss because their class didn’t exist in the xpac.
Yes. They would.
That doesn’t preclude them from doing the rest of it.
You’re removing all context of the meaning. Pancake view of the word.
I’ll give an analogy which might help you. A joist supports a floor. A stone supports the joist.
They’re both supports just having a different purpose in support.
Relating this back to the term support in MMORPG group content is anything that supports the trinity. An off tank. An off healer for instance are both seen as support roles. So too would debuffer or CC if it existed.
I’m actually kinda on board for this.
furiously polishing flute
I’m ready.
…get your minds out of the gutter, you heathens.