EXPANSION (possible spoiler? =P)Follow

This would utterly destroy the paladin class as I see it.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/injuredcolleagues.jpg

This is a SS from MMO-Champion's post about the 3.2.2 patch. It contains musings over "Mu'sha's Light" which according to WoWwiki is the Tauren's name for Elune. There's also been some posts talking about how the Tauren might be experimenting with putting balance aside and looking more to the light of their "Sun-God".

There's some good topics started on MMO's new Cataclysm forum. All backbiting, name calling, and vulgar language aside, I find people's ideas of how this could or could not work to be interesting. Was hoping to have a bit more discussion here myself :(

Maybe I'm the only one who finds lore (or the lack/change thereof) exciting, hehe ;)

Sir Zeliek is an odd case yes, but he is not a "current" Paladin, so therein lies a great difference in what you are proposing. Sir Zeliek is a Death Knight and former Paladin who retained some of his sanity, but is still bound to the Lich King's will. His lore states that he was so strong in his faith in life that he still commands the Light in his undeath. This fact though does not make him a Paladin still.

Honestly, making the Forsaken able to be paladins may be one of the only things to make me quit this game over from a "lawlLore" standpoint. The Paladin is a tireless adversary of the undead, so giving any faction of undead the Paladin class would be a total perversion of everything that a Paladin is.

I agree, it seems like a stretch to be giving Paladins to the Tauren, but I am very interested to see how they can make it play out. BEs getting Paladins angered me greatly, not because they are Horde, but because of the whole "stealing" the Light (later they were accepted 'normally', but the original lore). But Tauren, if they could have been Paladins from the start, I would have a Horde main =P Tauren are my favorite race, but Paladin was (and is) my favorite class.

EDIT: link failure

Edited, Aug 16th 2009 4:50pm by Maulgak

lol, yes this scares me as well. It was a b!@#$ in the low/mid 50s, and I never even finished the whole thing until I was able to solo most of it. The quote I'm assuming you are referring to makes it sound like classic dungeons will cease to be what they are and only be for higher level players, but I find it hard to believe there would be no more dungeons for players 10-58 to run at all. My guess is more like with the Heroic dungeon system, you'll have for instance Razorfen Downs 37-42 (or whatever it is) and Razorfen Downs 80-85.

As far as only race/class combos, I agree, there are some I think make sense (Dwarf Shaman) and others seem like a big stretch (Gnome Priest). Makes me that much more interested though in it seeing how Blizzard will make the lore so that these work. Note: unlike others say, I don't think that these new combos added will necessarily "break" old lore, just add new lore. A big appeal, for me at least, is the fact that Azeroth is treated as if it were a real place, and real life changes. So seeing how "the world" evolves is part of the fun :D

I gotta comment on BE Warriors though. When they first were brought in I thought, "WTF?? They can be Rogues? Rogues don't use mana ..." because they were supposed to be this mana addicted race and everything revolved around that addiction. How does Rogue fit into that? Made sense they didn't have Warriors, but now they will. I'm still not quite sure how non-mana users fall in line with BEs, but ok :P

Got off topic, lol, as this is a Paladin forum, but that's ok. I'm happy to have a place to discuss this regardless ;)

EDIT: I just reread the MMO post and came across this:



Maybe we won't have to worry about BRD after all? lol

Edited, Aug 17th 2009 2:33am by Maulgak

I'd be more impressed with racial Paladins (and Priests, come to that) if they had a "holy warrior" or priest who actually bore some ties to a particular in-game religion, with a greater diversity of spells and specializations than there currently is.

There could be quests specifically to enhance the character's standing in a particular in-game religion, tithes to pay to your temple/church to increase reputation and gain small enhancements - that kind of thing. As it is, Paladins and Priests are great characters to play, but they seem to exist in a religious vacuum and actually have no ties or duties to a cult or temple whatsoever.

Can you find something that says he isn't a paladin?

This is what I mean. Blizzard could say, right now, that that dude is and always has been an undead paladin, and we would retroactively have had undead paladins since ever. Nowhere have they said that undead guys can be paladins. Nowhere have they said that they can't. They've left the whole field open, presumably so they can shove tauren in there someday.

I was, for lack of a better word, a little biased against the horde when I started playing. It actually began when a few friends of mine told me to play wow. They played horde, and I wanted to be a paladin. I thought the horde were even, especially because I liked paladins. I was very wrong.

My first horde character was a tauren warrior. After the initial obvious quests I did, I never quite got over the idea of balance and adherence to nature and goodness that the tauren exuded. It wasn't like the blood elves, who I absolutely love to play as now, who are way more amoral than the orcs or the rest of the horde races. They actually stole the light from a naaru, or thought they were anyway. But the tauren are, from every viewpoint, actually good. They are less rigid and more free-spirited than the dwarves or humans, and aren't as ethereal and un-approachably alien as the Dreanai - pun intended.

And of course, it is easy to see how they would be able to follow the code and tenets of the Light.

Tauren were and always will be my favorite of the races, and now that they can be one of my favorite classes, I can't wait to roll one again. Perhaps we will see more use out of thunder bluff than we currently do, especially if most or any of the rumors floating around are true.

I can't be the only one who wants to watch a new undead paladin cast consecration, then scream in agony as the holy fires cleanse his undead flesh. (And yes, I realize that undead are humanoid, but come on, this would be a great animation).

Oh, the irony, and perhaps the hypocracy, of an undead paladin casting exorcism...