New Alliance Race Speculation thickens!

[MongoJerry]

You lost me here.
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He probably means that the current endgame will be horribly broken by the introduction of level 70 characters anyways. Even NXM will be easy mode. The new content can be balanced around having shamans and paladins in mind.

Not that I think it's going to happen, but the balance of current dungeons doesn't stop it from happening.
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Yeah, I understand, but I keep scanning through anything I said or even what Gnollguy said and I don't see where anyone made the claim that because it would break existing content (which it would now that Lem brought it up), it wouldn't be allowed. It's as if Lem suddenly said, "Trees can still be pretty even if shaman and paladins can be a part of the same faction." I mean, it's true, but I don't think anyone was arguing that trees would suddenly become ugly if shaman and paladins played on the same side.

I don't think shaman and paladins will be mixed for three reasons:

1. It would remove an important distinction between the two factions. While there is a lot of overlap between a shaman's and paladin's powers, there are differences that make encounters unique depending on what faction you are playing on. Obvious raid-level examples would include Razorgore where Horde guilds tend to create shaman kiting circles while Alliance guilds tend to try to kill off mobs and Hururon who is a simple fight for Alliance and as difficult to fight as Vael for Horde. Most other fights aren't nearly as extreme as these, but the differences between having paladins or shaman in your raid party makes a difference and makes one's experience unique. These differences in effect "double" the size of the game in that if one get tired of playing one faction, one can always choose to create a character of the opposite faction and experience the existing content in new ways.

2. At the same time, while there are differences between paladins and shaman, the two classes were created to fill similar niche roles in parties and raids and have similar powers to one another. These classes were designed not to be together and now they would suddenly get thrown together to compete for the same positions in parties and raids.

3. At the same time, now you have two buffer classes whose combined multiplicative effects could wildly unbalance the game. Sure, new content could be created with the assumption that you always have a shaman and paladin in your party, but then you get stuck in the situation where you *must* have a paladin and a shaman in your party, because a party that doesn't have them would be so much weaker otherwise.

No, I really don't see Blizzard doing this. Could they do it? Yes. Do I think they will do it? No.