I was a Wizard on live, and I can tell you I was always a bit jealous of the Mages. It wasn't until PoP era, when I had a horse (at least outside), the best flappy, FT 15, MC3, and several mana regen clickies, that I felt I had the mana to keep up in a group. Seemed like mages had great sustained group DPS naked.
There was also the occasional quest farming that made me grind my teeth; things like the Coldain shawls and the AC. Those would have been much nicer with a pet.
On the other hand, being a Wizard on a raid is fun. I'm sure it's much more fun that being a Mage on a raid. There were also a few AoE scenarios where Wizards owned.
I always had the impression that Mages weren't balanced right between classic and maybe PoP, but I didn't play one personally, so take that with a grain of salt. The reason I say this is because I remember Kunark dungeons putting a big emphasis on the importance of mez and snare. Obviously mez is fairly restricted to classes that can't do good DPS, but snare is not. Necros, Rangers, and Wizards can all do good DPS and still snare mobs (Wizards and Rangers can also do it while the mobs are mezzed without breaking mez IIRC). Mages can't snare at all, nor can they evac. I think this conspires to make the viable group lineups that include Mages fewer than those that include other DPS classes. There is also the issue of pets and mez, but I'm not really qualified to talk about it.
It was my impression in Kunark and Velious and even into Luclin and PoP that Rogues were the default all-out DPS class for groups for some reason, and that's the role Mages were trying to fill.
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