14 DAY TRIAL // World of Warcraft is such a huge success that the community always keeps an eye out for small tidbits of information concerning the game's future. Blizzard is very good at harnessing this uncanny interest in the game, so with The Burning Crusade expansion reaching higher states of development, more and more future content is revealed. The six million player base can also put a lot of pressure on Blizzard, if changes are not popular. We already know that no new hero class is coming, and the idea of siege weapons was abandoned along the way, but the bomb dropped yesterday.
It seems The Burning Crusade will bring balance to the already disputed PvE capabilities of both factions, by allowing Blood Elves to take up the Paladin profession for The Horde and the Dranei to be Alliance Shamans. While this move has its benefits, it's a coin toss as unique, faction-specific, classes will be lost to oblivion.
Most fans can't comprehend this rather obvious change in Warcraft Lore. It's difficult to swallow the fact that traditional enemies will now become allies. Horde hated Paladins for their invulnerability shields, just as Shamans were feared and generally considered hardy opponents by the Alliance. On PvP servers it was almost a matter of honor for these classes to battle it out on the killing field, a fact mirrored by fan feedback on the official WoW forums. They believe this move to be a futile attempt to decline responsibility for failure in a seemingly impossible task: the rebalancing of the Shaman class. Paladins recently saw a makeover by Blizzard and, by a couple of reasons, are believed to be far superior to Shamans in PvE raids.
However, one needs to look farther into the future to anticipate tactics and scripting for dungeon raid bosses. Since The Burning Crusade's new encounters are supposed to be the toughest in World of Warcraft, a Blizzard poster points in this direction: "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."