To preface this, I’ve been playing the World of Warcraft: Forever beta this weekend, and while the previous post in this “series” had a Final Fantasy-tinged lean, this one will lean into Warcraft exclusively.
I play a Paladin in World of Warcraft. Why this particular class? As mentioned in a previous post, Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy IV is primarily why, and secondarily to that is Warcraft II having a Paladin unit that was upgraded from the Knight unit once a Church was built, Human side of course. This spoke to me big time growing up.
Famously in retail WoW, the Horde did not get access to the Paladin class until the addition of Blood Elves in The Burning Crusade, so my initial characters were Alliance, and indeed when I started playing my current retail main in early 2010, I went Alliance, though I eventually did swap to Horde and currently play Horde, I do have a couple of Alliance alts for additional raid lockouts for mounts and the like.
So why talk about this again? Well, the elephant in the room is WoW: Forever as well as some upcoming changes in retail WoW. In both retail and Forever, the Horde will have access to Paladin via the Undead (Forsaken) race. This piqued my interest big time, so I elected to get access to the WoWF beta.
I’ve honestly never taken a Horde character up from scratch through the “old world”. The only low level Horde zones I’ve gone through in their entirety are the old Eversong Woods and Ghostlands. Every other character’s either been boosted recently, been a death knight, or used the new intro sequence into Dragonflight or Battle for Azeroth. Part of this is my proclivity to play Blood Elves.
At first I had thought not to try the Beta, but after reading on some stuff and actually looking at the talent trees, I got access to it on the second day. I was a bit apprehensive about Undead Paladins, but considering Undead Priests have existed as long as the game has, I decided to give it a go. The lore has not disappointed, and honestly it speaks to me a bit on a personal level.
While it’ll be a bit before the level cap is raised in the WoWF beta, I did very much enjoy leveling to 20, and the weapon from the Undead edition of the Level 20 Paladin class quest does not disappoint.
WoWF’s release is slated for November 4. I’ll be there!