http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=1141585&p=1&tmp=1#post1141585

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/burningcrusade/townhall/classcombo.html

Confirmed by a blue post in the General Forums (Page 5):

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=9154678&p=1&tmp=1#post9154678

 "As we draw closer to the release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, more of the secrets shrouding the Draenei and Blood Elves are being revealed. One legend involves the noble leader of the Draenei, Velen, and his vision. Velen’s vision was given substance in the form of Nobundo, a one-time Draenei priest who had devolved while the orcs decimated his race and tore the planet apart. Like his fellow Broken, Nobundo had lost contact with the Light, and so he ventured far into the deserts of Outland to meditate and pray for guidance.

After decades of silence, an unfamiliar voice finally answered his prayers. It was not the Light that whispered to him, but the wind. The breeze spoke to him of lost truths, of the might of the elements--of the delicate balance of power embraced by the shaman. Nobundo listened eagerly and learned all he could. When he judged the time was right, he departed the desert determined to use this knowledge to help the Draenei race.

Meanwhile, the Blood Elves busied themselves by establishing the fearsome Blood Knights. Their founding was made possible through the capture of a naaru from Tempest Keep by Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider. Kael’thas delivered the naaru to Silvermoon, where Magister Astalor Bloodsworn began months of study and experimentation on the naaru. Eventually, Astalor and his fellow wizards learned how to manipulate and corrupt the naaru’s luminous energies. In the end the wizards devised a process by which the powers of the Light could be transferred to recipients who had not earned such abilities. Instead of feeding upon the naaru's magic, the blood elves would wield the naaru's Light-given powers themselves.

Lady Liadrin, formerly a priestess, had recently renounced her vows, for she felt the Light had abandoned her people. She learned of the wizards' achievement and volunteered to be the first to bend the stolen powers to her will. With her decision a new order was born: the Blood Knights. These renegade paladins are able to harness the sacred powers of the Alliance’s noblest heroes.

These new developments with the Draenei and Blood Elves mean that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will allow Alliance players to create shamans, and Horde players to play as paladins, using the newly uncovered races. The ability for players of both factions to use any class opens up exciting new gameplay opportunities, with fresh group-play dynamics. Those who have faithfully pledged their allegiance with one faction or the other will finally have the opportunity to try out a class that was once unavailable to them. While Alliance shamans and Horde paladins mostly share the same talents as their counterparts across the battlefield, they will also enjoy some unique abilities to themselves, similar to the priest class’ racial specialties. Stay tuned to wow-europe.com for more information. "




I guess this is their solution to the "Alliance has the advantage in PvE" arguement.

guess i'll have to make a shaman now   

I'm not looking forward to this change at all.

It is definitely going to make Raiding that much more interesting.  I'll be rolling one, not gonna lie.

Agreed. Raiding should be easier.

I think this is a serious mistake on the part of the design team (I know Liirykel is waiting for me around the corner with contrary arguments  ). This is giving up on what made the Horde different from Alliance. Now we are one big happy family. We just look different. I think its BS. Now it’s:  they are ugly and we are not. I loved to hate the Shaman and I’ll miss hating them. If I was Horde, I would be pissed right now.

My two cents…   ???

I've wanted to play a tauren shammy for a long time.  I don't know if the new alliance race appeals to me as much.

Sorry Thal. Shammy will bump druids for spots. As such is what Blizz seems to want. They offer no gear for for druids besides healing gear. Look at Teir 2 and 3 gear, all healer. I have to do ZG and AQ for any gear for my druid. Yet I have to fight with other classes to get the gear.
These are dark times for druids, hence the shortage of druids. Feral and Balance spec druids are hosed in this game. Many have quit playing druid and I may if things dont get fixed with the expansion. I'm a soldier, not a wussy medic.
At least i'll be able to roll a Shammy.

Lets just roll shamies for the Raz fight 

I think having access to a new class should be treated like getting a new tool in raiding. As new strategies come out that involve shammies in alliance runs we can rotate in those characters when needed. I have heard alot about shammies being awesome during the Razorgore fight, we own that fight now but it would have been easier if we could have used a shammy. Im sure alot of outlands raids will require the use of both shammies and pallies to make it a success.

I see this as a danger to paladins more than it is to druids.
 I dont know much about shammies but dont they whine all the time about pally buffs and they have salvation and stuff now?

Paladins suck at dps compared to other classes, however druids and shammies can both dps and heal (not sure about shammy tanking)

wouldnt it be sooooooo much easier and sensible just to modify the paladin some more (1.9 was a joke), if you read the paladins forums you will see hundreds of people asking for a new tree to replace the joke called protection.

That said, I would play an alliance shammy just to see how its like, I could never play horde too ugly and dark for my taste 

MOW is invaluable IMO.

I feel that if the shammy was given the abilities to buff raids with their totems all would be fine, the Horde are mad because shammy totems only do groups. It takes twice as many shammies as it does pallies to buff raids. Less spots for dps classes which in turn makes boss fights harder. All they needed to do is give the totems a larger buff radius and make then usable by all raid members.

Agreed. MotW is hands-down the best buff in the game. Druids also have innervates and battle rez.

so does this mean that i get to....FROSTTTSHOCKKK and throw down TOTEMS TOTEMS TOTEMS!!!!!!!

sigh...yeah.    I tend to agree that druids will be at risk.  I see it also forcing more druids into restoration specs again so they have a Raid spot.  Yes, MOTW is great but you only need one druid for it and that is perferablly a druid willing to give 5 skill points up to improve it which doesn't make sense for every build.  Innervate and battle res also nice but I'm not sure it's enough to not bump druids and especially druids that try to play outside the box of healer. 

I guess we'll see when the expansion come out.   

to much work

Well, to be honest, we dont know if the Shammys and pallies are gonna be mirror images of one another. They might make the horde pallies evil, and the alli shammies, I dunno. Cant think. Long day.

yah thats cool and all, but now it does seem like everyone is going to be one big happy family lol....who knows how it is going to be when the expansion comes out.

whats going to happen when not everyone is going to buy it? but anyways.
I agree with mel - the alliance race doesnt appeal to me either

Hit me up, I have a 60 Shammy on my account I'd be more than willing to let you roll around on.

My horde main is a 58 Shaman which I greatly enjoy and think I play the best of the classes I have tried.  I am fairly certain at this point that I will be making the Shaman my new main, as I love the class in general. So, add me to the Shaman list.

From Eyonix:

"We don't have any plans to increase the raid size for expansion. If anything we're focused on creating smaller player capped raid dungeons for the Burning Crusade as we've stated as early as when we hosted the BlizzCon event."

Bad idea IMO, I like the hate Shamies and Pallies create.

Oh and for those who say that horde can't progress as far as alliance guilds cus they don't have Pallies

http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/article-191-1-video-gothik-the-harvester.html

Playing a Paladin means paying attention to other people more than yourself. You have buffs you have to keep on the group. You have to remove debuffs when they're up. You have to have the correct aura up, and try and stand in a spot that everyone will benefit from it  -- a 30 yard circle isn't as large as you think. You have to put up seals and judge them on the targets people are focusing on to help the DPS casters or melee out. You have to watch life bars and prop people back up when the other healers types are in trouble or OOM.

Shamans, in my 15 levels of experience with them thus far, are much less group focused. You can have 1 earth, 1 fire and 1 wind totem out at a time. It has a limited range, so you plunk one down around the an area and hope the people stay in their radius. It's a bit easier than having to move with the group. My buffs as a shaman, thus far, are for myself - weapon enchants, lightening shield. I've not yet encountered instances where Purge was actually useful, but I can see them upcoming.

So, aye. Paladins aren't for everyone   It can be considered 'boring' to do lower white damage than all the other melee classes. But when a fight calls for someone versatile - it can be quite fun. I remember a guild UBRS (10-man) that was SO excellent. We pulled a group accross the bridge and a tank died. I switched from DPS (ha ha, I know) and stepped in to tank. Then an assasin popped up from behind and knocked a healer out ... and the other healer died. It was popping around, throwing Seal of Light and raid markers up, healing when I coould, blessing of Protectioning the mage at the right moment to get the sheep off and continue damage -- it was fun flipping from role to role and adapting to what the group needed. We didn't wipe

I tried a paladin once. It didn't get past level 6. As aular said, paladins aren't for everyone.

Not that happy about the whole thing personally.  I rolled a shammy a while back and played it some.  Was ok, but it didn't get very high as I spend most of my time on our server of course.  And I'm sure I'll make one when they come out, but what bugs me the most is that I made my Pally partly because it's what I was on Dark Age, but another big part was because the horde couldn't have one.  Now they can and that sucks imo. 

I do see the Light (so to speak) of Blizz now being able to create some fights where a Pally can shine (other than the occassional run through Scholo or Strat for our 'PvE restricted' undead abilities), and that will be cool if they actually do it, but the cost to me seems a bit large for just a chance at that.

I'm sure it'll all wear off eventually.