Blizzard announced Friday that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the forthcoming expansion pack for the popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), will add Paladins to the Horde and Shamans to the Alliance. This will be done through the introduction of the previously announced Blood Elves to the Horde and Draenei to the Alliance.
Veterans of the game will recognize the major shift in Horde vs. Alliance gaming this represents. Heretofore, Paladins and Shamans were considered similar in power, though different in the execution of that power. Each is equally cursed by players from the opposing factions, and the lack of each has meant that Player vs. Environment questing strategies and methods have been quite different in many WoW settings.
Accordingly, adding those classes to the factions will present players with a fundamental shift in playing the game, though some will no doubt complain about the homogenization of factions.
That said, Blood Elf Paladins and Draenei Shamans will be slightly different from the current classes with the same name. Blizzard said that each would have some talents and skills that represent the different paths that each race has trod in game lore.