Some may recall my opinion on limited classes being ok in the class/race matrix because I thought that from an immersion aspect, the race you chose coerced (some might say "forced") you to learn how to play in the way of that race given the class limitations available. It was a pleasant cultural thing: the gnomes, lacking tanks or healers learn to play the game and succeed in the "gnomish" way with the classes available to them from levels 1 to however old they need to be to safely travel. Then as a gnome when you discover other races, you re-learn how to play with those classes in those races while still retaining the "gnomish" skills.
Which also means no ports- because weasle cheese mongers will want to make a business of it, no. You play with who is there, it's an accidental convenience nothing more but I digress.
However, to my point, EQ had a unique accident with the necro class, at least in the beginning. Those that chose that class found themselves accidental loners- never quite grasping the in-game social dynamics needed to sucessfully group. Partly because they didnt need to. In playing and discovering their class they could do many things on their own without outside help. Interestingly, at around level 50+ problems arose because in order to get the sweet raid items or new quest items that had small multi-group events built in, they needed to get help from outsiders that they never had to rely upon before. Then, almost insultingly, when in the raid environment their usefullness was limited to what they could do for the group (mana battery) and as a result where their solo efforts were OP, their perceived value for the team was low, even their DoT's never had time to fully resolve to express any kind of significant DPS.
This was surely not intended as the class has been unfortunately caught in the tweak/balance quagmire since (talking 10years + ago and from then on).
Everyone wanted pets. Not because of what they saw a necro could do with pets(remember, necro's could do much harder mobs), but because of observing how mages learned to play their pets as solo artists and in groups; even though they were not as powerful as wizards and often passed over for wizards in group choices.
The Necro lesson was a hard lesson but one brought about by the game as a result of the selection of the class, unbeknownst to the player.
As a new game, what VR defines as a class may be completely different than what players are used to. Bards might be completely useless alone and need to be grouped with at least 2 others in order to be remotely effective or a full group for optimal "performance", for instance. Spending hours LFG or "busking" in towns for groups- actually kind of makes sense.
I dont know if this kind of learned class behavior is intended/designed, or if its happenstance from the grab-bag of "sounds good" spell list and skills.
EQ had a lot of "unique accidnetal" pigeon-holing for classes... I'd be willing to say that a large % of how the class roles developed post Kunark was not within the vanilla design goals. (The defensive discipline introduced in Kunark was absolutely game-changing... along with many other level 50+ skills and equipment for all classes).
Add: The SHD was likely not conceptually designed to be the puller, the BRD was not designed to swarm kite entire zones, Charm was not not meant to be exploited as supreme raid DPS, the Ranger clearly wasn't designed as an actual archer, can go on and on...
It is my belief (hope) that VR is developing the entire game (especially classes) with a foresight that will avoid "too many" unforeseen "unique accidental pigeon-holes". A lot of us in this community have been very vocal in trying to avoid exactly that; but your concerns are valid.