There's still no real reason to restrict classes. What possible purpose would it serve?

It serves the purpose of breaking up the super leet people who want to play these other classes. You want them all on the same team again stick to ded99.

It adds flavor to the game, makes team choice more meaningful, and adheres to the game's lore (an important but undervalued consideration).

It's also classic.

And in practice it's just nice to have actual differences between the teams. Makes the server feel like more of a war rather than just a random assortment of people killing each other for no apparent reason.

The class differences result in tactical and strategic differences as well, which is most notable with the Evil team's lack of Druids. Without Druids, Evils must rely on Wizards for ports and Shamans for SoW. This makes them considerably less mobile than Goods and Neuts, who can get both from a Druid (especially since Druids, being one of the best classes on a PvP server, are everywhere). Meanwhile, Evils get large races and SKs to compensate, making them better in a straight-up fight but considerably less effective at hit and runs. There is a nice balance present despite the teams not being equal.

It's an interesting dynamic that's worth preserving.

This completely. One of the more interesting aspects of choosing to play in a competitive teams setting is balancing your advantages and disadvantages against both your competition and the game content. You need to have consequences to your choices or they aren't meaningful.

Some games do this through differences in weapon choices (like many shooters) or rock-paper-scissor ability distribution (like League of Legends). But a game where everything is identical across the board means my team decision was based on random selection and indifference.

Guild Wars 2 is a great example of how boring giving every team identical classes can be. The PvP was fun for about a month. I want to enjoy teams99 longer than that.

deny evil bards, thank me later.

mostly a lot of really great posts/ideas in this thread, ill be lurking quietly

No rallos bards, no weird deity barb shamen.

Rather than no Rallos Bards, why not move Rallos to Neutral? Pretty sure it would give them access to both SK and some of the big guys, without actually removing anything aside from bards from Evil. To balance the gains you could either drop Karana or Tribunal to good which would kick Rangers/Druids, or Shamans off their team. If nothing else it seems like it would end up creating interesting dynamics.

For reference the original SZ teams as far as I've been able to find:
The Good Alliance consists of: Erollisi Marr, Mithaniel Marr, Rodcet Nife, Quellious, Tunare
The Evil Alliance consists of: Bertoxxulous, Cazic Thule, Innoruuk, Rallos Zek
The Neutral Alliance consists of: Brell Serilis, Bristlebane, Karana, Prexus, Solusek Ro, The Tribunal, and Veeshan.

Maybe someone else could adapt it better, I really only suggest this because I'd like the teams to feel unique, but still manage to attract players.

trying to balance eq pvp is impossible

balancing teams just as impossible without making it a custom disgrace to the world of norrath. you are tampering with 14 year old lore. its like re writing the hobbit. its a sin and should be punished by death.

sam so damn wise