If you wanna be cool

Female Gnome Warrior / Female Halfling Warrior

If you want to be badass go ogre. If you want to raid tank go warrior.

Are there a lot of guilds looking for raid tanks?

-Brimacombe

One Pain in the ass thing I just remembered, being big can suck. Cobalt bracer runs like 30k? The shadow knight has no such options. Not certain on the price of shrink potions.

Eh. For grouping classes, xp penalties are much less of an issue than for someone who is soloing a lot, even before you hit 60.

Whether you're a troll shadowknight or a halfling warrior, you'll hardly be able to tell the difference in your personal xp gain when you're in a larger group because of the way your xp penalty is "shared."

Wood Elf Warrior

I'm of the opinion that some folks here place too much emphasis on racial abilities. Ogre stun resist is nice, but it isn't necessary. It hardly even matters for Warriors. Shadow Knights function fine without it as well, and that'll be all the more true once hybrid spell casting haste goes in with Velious (if it isn't in already). The difference is mostly one of perception.

My advice always amounts to: Pick what you like, as that'll keep you playing longer than picking some min-max combo that you quit due to indifference by level 30.

Warriors, Paladins, and Shadow Knights all have uncommonly-chosen races available to them; which class you pick likely depends on how much relative importance you place on raiding versus grouping or soloing. I strongly suggest a Warrior to anyone who wants to be a raid main tank, or one of the knight classes to someone who mainly wants to group. Paladins are quite possibly the least-played class on P1999 so their equipment tends to be cheaper if that's a concern.

Danth

Any class that you can be a Ogre you need to be a Ogre. The starting stats and Frontal Stun imunity are hard to pass up. They stand out that much.

But they are Evil and big and fat in indoor zones.

Are you sure it works like that? I was under the impression it was the act of bashing that interrupted spellcasting, not the stun that results. Are ogres also immune to that?

Really? My monk seems to get stunned at least once or twice per 1-minute fight, and he probably avoids more bashes than a similarly-leveled warrior would.

Maybe YOU don't mind spending a few seconds stunned out of every minute, but I don't think you can conclude that stun immunity hardly even matters just because you'd rather not be an ogre than be a superior warrior.