I've always preferred a class-based system personally. The games I like to play are ones that have both RK and PK and a class-based system is, to me, a lot easier to balance when it comes to PvP than a system where people can pick any skill they like. Though I haven't stuck around on many classless MUD's much, I've yet to find one that did a really good job of balancing the PvP issues. No doubt they're out there, I just haven't seen them.
If you want a mixture of the two worlds, you can provide a class-based system that has some small amount of customisation within the class. Warriors could specialise in a certain type of weapon, mages in a specific school of magic etc. Of course, these options can be split into separate classes themselves, which is the way I'm doing things on my own MUD. I have one general "warrior" class and five weapon specialists, and mages, clerics, bards, and thieves are all split too (although there is no general mage class). You're right, it does encourage people to try out new classes to play around with all the different skills and spells available, and to my mind it also leads to different combat strategies rather than "Pick this, this, and this skill if you want to be powerful" which is the bane of a classless system, because although there are some rare people out there who will pick skills out of a pure sense of RP, most want to be a powerful character and will always go for the power combinations. This happens even in MMORPG's, and multiplayer Neverwinter Nights is especially bad for it.
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