I remember people who where hardcore back into this game during it's prime posted a huge Tier Listing of the overall best characters...if I'm not mistaken, the Magic Casters where #1??? I forgot, lol.
Anyways, I really enjoyed this game for awhile seriously, it was fun to play on the GC, because my bros, and one of my sisters would play, 4 players at once was too much fun. I remember making a Humar, however after I swtiched over to a Hunewearl, because although they aren't as strong, their magic casting abilities are infinitely better, almost double that of a Humar, which to me makes alot of difference.
Imo, I've always felt Hunewearl was one of the best character's within the game overall, because they where overall more balanced than even the Humar and in some cases slightly better than balanced, because they can do solid damage with magic, and healing, while doing good damage as well.
Heh, however I'll leave that to you PSO guru's who know more of the game, all I know is, I spent a huge chunk of my life within this game, got my Hunewearl to lvl 200, got many of the strongest/best weapons and gears and basically called it quits.
My only gripe with the game was the drop rates for some of the weapons, I mean, wasn't some of them like 1 out of like 150,000 or something? That was just freaking nuts, and another was how slow the characters moved, if the game was faster paced, it would've made the experience much more fun and less tedious.
That's awesome that their's private servers, maybe some of you should post it here, so that if I do infact have the time, I'll pull my PSO game from out of the cobwebs and dust and play on these private servers. Would be fun to go and mess around with my Hunewearl again, hahaha.