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Horde Paladins and Alliance Shaman in WoW Expansion
Gamespot has the news that Blizzard will be allowing 'crossover' classes with the new races promised for the Burning Crusade expansion. The Paladin class, up until now an Alliance class, will be allowed for the Horde race of Blood Elves. Likewise, the Alliance Draenei will be able to choose the Horde Shaman class. From the article: "According to Blizzard, Horde paladins and Alliance shamans will have many of the same talents of their traditional counterparts, though they "will also enjoy some unique abilities to themselves, similar to the priest class' racial specialties." Since this new feature will fundamentally change the asymmetry between the game's two factions, it will presumably have a significant impact on the way the game is played, especially in competitive player-versus-player combat." It's also likely to somewhat balance the preference between the two factions. A pretty race for the Horde, and what is considered (by some) a very powerful class for the Alliance.
Speaking as a Tauren Shaman, I wouldn't want to face someone who has Windfury and Frostshock.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
and I saw this comming... this is a sad day for creativity in gaming. Just making everyone identical is not a good way to balance a game. If WoW ever had a soul it has officaly lost it.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
I frankly don't really care who gets what, I'm just disappointed in Blizzard.
I've played a Shaman to 60 and enjoyed it. It was the uniqueness of the class that made Horde stand out. The dungeon 1 shoulders are unmistakable, you know it's a shaman. In PvP a shaman is really fun to play due to the high survivability and DPS, although melee was nerfed somewhat in the last patch.
On the other hand, I found it unique to also fight against a class I couldn't group with. Paladins are a special challenge, especially against my rogue. Their gear is mostly gold, so you can really see them coming as well.
This just seems like a cop-out by a company that used to do innovation very well. They supposedly class-reviewed the shaman and for some reason gave them PvP buffs (especially with their offensive spell tree) when shaman were asking for more PvE utility. Horde in the end game is tougher than Alliance and the pally/shaman issue is the reason. So instead of coming up with a good idea or listening to the customers who had some great ideas to help shaman out, they just ignore the whole thing and give the Horde paladins, and Alliance shaman.
It'll take months after the expansion for either to make their presences truly felt but I guess Blizzard is just trying to scape a couple extra months of playtime out of an increasingly boring game.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I, for one, welcome our new Space Shaman overlords.
Shamans are almost useless in end-game raids, when you can have paladins instead!
Shamans for the alliance will be a nice novelty, but ultimately a white elephant in dungeons. they will be quite a nice addition for burst damage in pvp though.
on the horde side, the raiding shamans will see their roles marginalized by new paladins.
i could live a little longer in this prison
WoW forums explode. Incidentally, Blizzard information page containing lore about the announcement.
A Horde Paladin? Paladins are against everything evil, bad, unholy, etc. Half the horde is considered evil bad and/or unholy. What's next? Undead paladins? Gnome shamans?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
From Eyonix, a Blizzard employee:
"Something we have always held to as a core design philosophy is developing classes which are distinct from each other. This means developing a class with it's own abilities that clearly separate it from other classes in terms of how the class plays and operates, both for the player and from a design stand-point.
Early on in the inception of this game, it was a hot debate as to whether factions should have a specific class, which they alone have access to. Some wanted all classes to be distinct from each other, but accessible by all. Others thought that more flavor could be generated by keeping a class unique to a faction. Obviously, if you have one side with a unique class, you should probably give the other faction a unique class as well. Thus, Shaman and Paladins became those unique classes.
However, by linking them in a relationship as unique counter-points, options are closed for our main design goal, which is to keep classes distinct. We want factions to be balanced, but don't want to cut and paste abilities from one to the other and homogenize the classes. If we went that road, there would be little difference or need for a distinct class. We want classes to be different in more than just name-only or superficial appearances.
So, in our desire to keep the classes distinct and open up new possibilities for development of each class, shaman and paladins shall now be a playable class for both factions. This decision comes at a time when we have an opportunity to blend this decision into future development. Namely, with the new races in the upcoming expansion. Prior to the new races, the Paladin and Shaman lent themselves easily to their own factions and not that well to the opposite faction (Tauren Paladin? Gnome Shaman?) With the advent of the two additional races, the choice was made more clear in game design and lore.
In terms of game design, one of the options it opens up is for specific classes in dungeon encounters. We already have several encounters that highlight the abilities of a single class or make use of a classes specific abilities. Shaman and Paladins in the previous design could not participate in such encounters. If killing a creature required a Shaman, the Alliance could never beat the encounter and vice versa. This change allows the two classes to bring their own abilities into a situation which may highlight their class as an integral part of the encounter."
This is actually one of the few official responses from Blizz that I see as legit. Hopefully they can give the paladin and the shaman some really cool and distinct new abilities in the expansion.
This isn't to "expand play opportunities across factions", its to ease the burden on the designers of having to constantly tweak existing content for two separate play dynamics, not to mention this constant cry by the player-base to balance the Paladin against the Shaman.
The ugliness will begin when the loot tables for both sets are turned on, and guilds that do MC/BWL content start seeing drops wasted by a month or more of Paladin loot for the Horde, or Shaman loot for the Alliance, before the classes are of the appropriate level to raid.
The thing that astonishes me the most (and I've played WoW off-and-on since the release day) is that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for Blood Elves to be Paladins. These are the elves that broke with the night elf race due to their all consuming addiction to magic. Paladins draw their powers from divine sources and divine power is non-magical (if you don't play WoW or have familiarity with the backstory, this may not make sense). But anyway, it smacks of a slap-and-dash solution to an underlying game issue and it just makes no sense. I always really liked the fact that the Horde went to the elements for their power and the Alliance went to their belief in divinity. Now that distinction is worthless, and it was done in a way that contradicts the backstory of one of the races. I'm sure, they will come up with some hokey "explanation", but I don't even play a Paladin or a Shaman (any more), and I'm still looking at this change and going, "WTF? That makes no sense." I didn't really expect that my first reaction to a basic fact about the expansion would be that. I was more expecting, "Hey, neat." Blizzard caves to the eternal whining of the forumkiddies. How disappointing.
I play WoW. Not a lot, like I used to, but I still play. I intend to get the expansion and I think I will enjoy it, even though I am a casual player these days. I'm even considering getting another account so I can dual box. It makes solo'n a lot more fun and the money is immaterial to me. I've played since beta so I have a pretty good knowledge base of the game (been in a hardcore raiding guild for a while now, one which is consistently in competition for furthest advanced on our server, Windrunner). I was the second person on my server to hit level 60 in my class (Warlock).
All that said, I think people who are whining that both Horde and Alliance will be basically the same now (in endgame) are making assumptions.
First, the Horde Paladin will not be identical to the Alliance Paladin. The same goes for the Shaman on each side. The new racial abilities will see to it that they are different in a meaningful way. If there's one thing I know about racials in WoW, they ARE relevant. Take Perception for humans, WotF for Undead, and Escape Artist for gnomes as just three examples of how racials are useful. I promise that Blizzard will make the new racials quite useful as well. And on top of that there will be specific skills, like the Priest class has, which are unique to the new cross-overs. For example, undead horde priests have Devouring Plague, which is a pretty good Drain Over Time. Nobody else has that.
Well, ok then. So what about the problem with "evil" paladins? Uhm, what? Who said the Horde was really, inherently evil? Show me somewhere in the WoW Lore that says Horde are 'evil'. Tell me why the Argent Dawn would ally with Horde if they were? Just because they are at war with the Alliance makes them evil? I don't think so. So the Horde sees things differently than the Alliance, and so they clash... Take any number of real life examples and you see that two groups can be at war with each other and either none or both might be considered "evil". Sometimes it's very difficult in a war to see which side is right and which wrong.
I wouldn't mind it, however, if the Horde Paladin, being Blood Elf specific, was given an extra word in the name, such as Crimson Paladin... But that's beside the point.
From personal experience I have found that the people who tend to leave WoW are the ones who can't play along with others. They can't join a guild or don't want to because they just don't have a very agreeable personality. So they wind up playing alone. And they wind up watching as everyone else progresses and has a good time while they are still wearing the same old crappy blues, or whatever. Well, like I said, whine, bitch moan and sniffle. If you can't play well with others, WoW isn't for you.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
*tunes musical instrument* To the tune of "I'm a little teapot"
I'm a little paladin, short and stout! Here is my hammer, and my free mount!
When I get in trouble, hear me shout! Just throw up my shield, and hearthstone out!
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week...
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
As a relatively strong Starcraft player, I have to take issue with your claim that Brood War "screwed up the balance." Ask any strong player, I think they will all agree that Brood War is head and shoulders above vanilla Starcraft, particularly for the Terran who were not very often played before Medics. Now Terran are one of the most prominent races in the professional circles. Blizzard did not make Hellfire. Lord of Destruction is arguably the best expansion pack for a game ever. Two new classes, a huge new act, tons of new game mechanics (charms, runes, etc), lots of improvements, even a new UI, sort of (the larger resolution essentially changes the UI in a few meaningful ways). LoD is practically a new game, there's no turning back to regular D2. And The Frozen Throne COMPLETELY revamped a lot of the internal mechanics of WC3, and made it a much more complex and balanced game. The distinction between the different armor classes, etc, are now key when considering counterplay. If anything, Blizzard makes the best expansions of any game company I've ever seen, essentially doubling the amount of single-player content (always a full new line of campaigns), and improving and adding significantly to the existing multiplayer game. I've never been disappointed in Blizzard before, I see no reason to start now.