If I make a Mystic then betray to Neriak. Will I be able to stay a Mystic? or will it make me become a Defiler?
Paladins & Shadowknights, Mystics & Delifers, Conjurerers & Necromancers, and Swashbucklers & Brigands are the only classes locked to strictly good and evil alignments purely for lore reasons. Except on PVP servers, where a class balance is necessary for the server ruleset.
Or do what I did recently. I made an evil warden. Got to 11th adv level, deleted the character. Then made a good warden.
I"d buy the "lore" argument if the same alignment restrictions applied at launch. The restrictions then were very different. The current restrictions didn't go into effect until GU57. https://eq2.zam.com/wiki/GU57
Yes, a lot of classes were turned neutral and given proper lore explanations to justify them, but those four duos of classes, one from each archetype, were always good and evil from the start and will continue to remain that way. I know there actually isn't any reason why conjurers can't be evil (look at Lady Najena, a Dark Elf Magician from EQ1 who is now the single most powerful elementalist on Norrath), but the fact that there *are* reasons why a necromancer by principle will never be accepted in certain societies means that there can't be any Evil Conjurers for balance reasons. There aren't any Paladins under Lucan's employ because the entire game's backstory of him taking over Freeport was him getting revenge on the Knights of Marr who originally kicked him out by killing off every last one of them who didn't choose to flee the city when he came into power. Qeynos isn't going to justify muggers who would backstab you and leave you in the ditch after taking the 5 copper out of your purse, mages who will use your grandma's corpse in battle, shamans who will use your grandma's soul in battle, or warriors who have willingly traded their soul to malevolent forces of hatred, anger, fear, and disease in exchange for corrupting powers. Druids have been neutral from the start of the game. Shamans aren't druids though.
But Qeynos is perfectly fine with an assassin that poisons his blade and stabs you in the back for money?
Not for money. They actually explain it that sometimes people are deemed as threats and need to be taken out before they can become larger threats. Political assassinations and the like. The City of Qeynos questline actually explains that there are some organizations who aren't entirely morally white within Qeynos, and need to take more drastic measures for the greater good. Think of it like how the CIA exists for the US. As I mentioned, there are NPCs for each of those classes who actually explain why they're allowed to exist in Qeynos (and Freeport for that matter)-- and it honestly makes sense, but the above mentioned 8 classes are inexcusable and just are not going to happen.
Cusashorn pretty much had the ideal answer here. I'll take it a step further however. The question of non-evil assassins for AD&D once came up in Dragon Magazine (decades ago, we're talking 2nd Ed was new). The author pretty much gave a similar answer and cited James Bond as one such character. The man literally has a license to kill after all, and uses it pretty freely in most books and movies.
I don't see how a deleted character can effect a new character. I even gave the character the same name, no guards in Qeynos bothered the new character.
Lawful Evil is, by classic AD&D definition, pursuit of power and personal gain via a structured system without any concern for the for the suffering of others. Legalized slavery is lawful evil. The people that sold us the house that wasn't worth the land it was built on are lawful evil (they exploited the system). Somebody like Bond, or your typical military sniper, may be doing something that's ignoble on the surface, but if either one can take out the keystone in an evil force, have it completely fall apart, and thus save many more lives, how evil is it? The trouble with the world today (NOT you specifically, I don't know you near well enough to pass that kind of judgment) is that good and evil have been reduced to fairy tale levels of stupid much of the time. ANY degree of personal responsibility is evil, anyone who wants to give you freedom from responsibility is good, etc... In that specific instance either extreme is bad actually. In that idealized "Lawful Stupid" world, violence is never justified under any circumstances. In the real world, sometimes it IS required. Hitler never would have been stopped by a social media campaign as a blatantly easy example. In MY mind, what determines if violence is evil comes down to what was done to avoid it first, and is it being done for selfish reasons or to protect yourself or others. Bad cops, for example may be able to try to excuse their actions via the second test, but rarely can pass the first one. Assassination definitely does stretch the whole concept to the extreme. Especially in this day and age where you can't trust what dang near any leader says. In the case of a Bond type, there should be some hard questions about what's truly in the public interest or "greater good". A ton of evil has been justified that way. None the less, it doesn't automatically make the idea of Qeynos having assassins around totally implausible or automatically evil
It's not like Qeynos didn't have a network of spies and informants before the Assassin class became neutral. It was necessary for the cold war scenario at the start of the game when both Qeynos and Freeport were making sure the other wasn't planning something against them. It's just that at GU57, the story of the game had developed further to a point that the assassins and spies no longer had to stay in the shadows.
I'm glad you brought D&D into the discussion. In DDO, paladins still have to be lawful good, so that's still the same, but necromancers can be good. I point that out to say ... D&D isn't necessarily a great point of reference. The idea of the ends justify the means doesn't necessarily mean evil, but the above example of political assassinations really would. Doing it for your queen/king/government is the lawful part.
