How many times have you complained (or heard someone else complain) about the balance of the two faction-specific classes and how they affect battlegrounds, raiding, or anything else?
How many times have you seen a really nice piece of plate or mail armor, as appropriate, drop that had a bunch of caster-intensive stats and said, "Dammit, why do we keep having to get paly/shammy loot?" (At least paladins can wear the mail, but that's somewhat besides the point.)
How many times have you actually considered the design of encounters, and the impact of having blessings vs totems, and the other aspects that make the classes unique?
How many times have you complained when Blizzard takes one step closer toward homogenizing those two races because they are entirely too different to be fair to both sides, and yet players deep down really *want* them to be different?
Yes, it's a world of unfairness and dischord, but at least the developers are making it way easier on themselves in the future to create content, to take the paladin and shaman in different directions, and to OTHERWISE diversify the game. I'm sorry that you have a petty gut-reaction knee-jerk complaint that that doesn't satiate, but look at the greater good...
Complaint #1 wrote:
I...I just didn't think Blizzard would ever do it! Watch it go downhill from here, Peace between the Factions, love and harmony rule the Kingdoms of Azeroth, no more PvP, no more BG's.
Blizzard's done a lot of stuff you wouldn't have expected, or that was in their original envisionment of the game. They didn't think they would be tying servers together for battlegrounds, for example.
Complaint #2 wrote:
How much longer until there is no differences at all with Alliance and Horde?
How many differences are there supposed to be? If players find ways to complain about the relatively minor differences racial bonuses confer, they will kick and scream and whine and pout over unique classes...and they most certainly have. While some people like and appreciate those differences, they're also making creation of the game a total PITA as Blizzard has to think on a particular boss "now, Paladins have Blessing of Kings which makes this fight much more trivial for Alliance, but it's a good fight for Horde" (Broodlord among others) or "Shamans will find this a joke with a poison cleansing totem, but this is gonna be hard as nuts for Alliance." (Viscidus)
Complaint #3 wrote:
Sounds more like Blizz caving in to the whining that Paladins are better at Raiding and Shamans are better at PvP.
Effectively, it is. But not so much the whining of the players as the internal strife. See previous remark.
Complaint #4 wrote:
There's some idiot who wanted it this way for "balance", but there's about three million players crying in protest because this is a very stupid thing to do.
I would hardly call you in the majority, quite honestly. For every person crying this weekend, there have been 10 people throughout the many months that have argued in some way about faction imbalance.
Complaint #5 wrote:
'Flavor' them all you like, the masses of shaman will seem less mysterious and threatening to the Alliance, as the paladins will seem less of a juggernaut to the Horde once they become used to them.
Well, I've got nothing on this one. Collateral damage, I guess.
Complaint #6 wrote:
Oh, and one more Class to compete with for Plate, and one more class to compete with for your limited Tier drops, like those weren't annoying enough to wait for.
QQ more. You'll notice I play an Alliance hunter. I'm actually looking *forward* to this for that reason, because then maybe Blizzard will design more mail items I could use instead of just "Increases healing by 47." Three cheers for Mend Pet.
Complaint #7 wrote:
Influx of BE Paladins for the horde. Influx of Draeni Shamans for alliance. Could it get any better for alliance?
Being more of a raider than a PvPer, I see this as more of a benefit to Horde than Alliance. In fact, in spite of there being more Alliance than Horde, I've seen WAAY more complaints about paladins than shamans on just about every discussion board except maybe paladin class boards, so either Horde are a bunch of crybabies, or more likely, there's some real imbalance that's going to get resolved in Horde's favor.
Complaint #8 wrote:
Now shamans have almost no reasons to be brought into a raid group. Before, horde didn't have paladins and shamans were at least a gimped subsitute.
As long as shamans can cast healing spells for more than just a bandage or for their pet, and can save the raid with an Ankh, they will be "good for" more than many DPS classes.
And that's just what I was able to take out of the first page of the thread Seoman posted.
On the other hand, a few people do see the pluses:
Quote:
Maybe now they'll finally fix the pallie's protection tree. Another tanking class for raids wouldn't be terrible.
Quote:
On the other hand though, it allows Paladins and Shamans to have their own roles now. IF Blizzard does it correctly, they have the potential to make both classes truly shine, by making them seperate.
Quote:
I've thought about it a little more and IMHO I don't think this idea is really THAT bad. From a design standpoint, it makes it easier to make shaman and paladin unique without having to think about faction balances ever step of the way. This can be good as they can push pallies to be more tanking oriented and shamans to actually be usefull in PVE? I don't know. I do know that humans don't really like change and this is a MAJOR change. So naturally there will be a TON of ranting. After the release of BC the game will be a whole lot different. People will adjust and a couple years down the road, some of us will be like: "Remember when paladins were alliance only? God that sucked, I like my pally, but I never want to play alliance."
My apologies for not citing anyone's quotes, but I thought it better not to single people out for their complaints, and some of them I even modified a little.
