How about giving "useless" ranking classes the chance to quest for experience? Maybe in the form of.. you do X quest, you get a level. Playing certain classes requires that you wait around for long periods of time just trying to get someone to take the hits for you - it's very stressful and just plain annoying if you aren't lucky enough to be playing the right alignment/class at the right time.

Perhaps this is why it's good to have a permagroup of friends to rank you - if I didn't have some form of ethics, I'd be doing this a lot more. However, if you don't have friends, it doesn't encourage you to play anything but a man-at-arms class. Sitting around isn't fun. Sitting around doesn't really encourage progress. There's only so much practicing and waiting you can do with one character before you delete, otherwise you do have some form of mental illness, as was previously hinted at with the botting topic.

So, again, the questing option comes up - because it's an alternate way for those classes to get past the hard ranks. Perhaps this could be implemented, perhaps not. Otherwise, you will see more and more of the man-at-arms domination and less of the harder-to-rank classes.

Regards.