lol we don’t need more homogenization. You have plenty of options to play the Paladin class. Choose one of those!
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I was originally in the camp of that all races should get Paladin, Druid, Shaman and Demon Hunter but over time that has changed and since are gonna get Void Elf Demon Hunter which is totally gross and overly forced I don’t really care for flimsy reasoning for having them all playable for all races, I mean sure if it makes sense then yeah maybe but just because people want something like Void Elf Paladin or Undead Paladin yeah no.
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I mean, don’t paladins also suffuse their very being with their faith/the Light or is that headcanon I picked up somewhere
Player demand has always driven game/class expansion, and Blizzard has shown that “never” often turns into “now” once the story finds a way to support it (Player Housing). Void elf demon hunters may feel forced to some, but that doesn’t mean other combos like paladins for all races would have to be. Midnight’s themes give a natural, lore-friendly reason for the “Light” to reach unlikely champions, which is a stronger foundation than simply saying no because it feels strange to some.
I knew posting this would get pushback because the forums lean toward the most hardcore voices, but the reality is they don’t represent the majority of the player base. Most players just want more freedom and options, and opening up race/class combos would give them exactly that without hurting anyone else’s experience.
I’m sure you can find some official source that claims this for Silver Hand paladins.
But that doesn’t mean all paladins have to do it, or even all human paladins.
Paladins don’t need a shared origin story. They’re just priests who skipped a few priest lessons so they could learn to swing a hammer.
Humans make it a whole song and dance. But not every race does, nor would new paladin races need to.
And the races that want to make paladins special already have their own orders. They don’t need to slap human flavor over everything to justify it.
No, it would be a lazy, half baked way for blizzard to do it.
Yeah imagine that. People want some modicum of effort in their lore. So hardcore.
It would hurt a lot of players’ experiences, because a lot of players hate the idea of homogeneous paladins. Because the races and cultures are not the same. They have their own beliefs and practices. When they added orc priests their original iteration was basically “human priests but green”. The community rightly tore them apart, and blizzard went back and gave them their own proper lore. Lots of people hated how human centric the paladin order hall was. And a lot of people saw the possibility of what Tyr’s Guard could be and pre-emptively pushed back hard. Yes people want more paladins. But not like this.
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It hurts the lore and foundation of the game. That is more important than any selfish players desire to have access to things they don’t really need and only just want. People like you are the vocal and loud minority, you got it very backwards. We should not listen to people like you.
I also fully disagree. There are people who post on these forums that are for and against things and then there is everybody else who never thinks about why they can’t be a paladin on such and such race and they genuinely don’t care and likely would not even use the option even if given to them. The only people who want these things just lurk on these forums and to a lesser extent some other social media platforms. In all cases we should still ignore such unrealistic and silly demands and calls for homogenization.
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If anyone here is the minority, it’s the small group of hardcore posters (1000+ forum posts) arguing to keep restrictions in place while the wider player base either wants more freedom or simply wouldn’t be bothered by it. Adding options doesn’t erase lore, it expands it, and Blizzard has proven countless times that the story can adapt when the game evolves. Calling people “selfish” for wanting more choice ignores the fact that nothing is being taken away, it only makes the game more accessible for everyone.
The simple fact is all race/class restrictions should be lifted at this point. This is modern WoW, not classic, and players expect freedom of choice. What I’m suggesting here is just one idea for how to handle Paladins, but the bigger picture is that every combo deserves to be opened up eventually.
The wider player base does not want more freedom. Only the forum minority and to a lesser extent some social media people want this. The foundation will always be more important than your selfish wants. Modern WoW does not need further homogenization because you don’t like restrictions. If you don’t like them, then you don’t like WoW and should consider finding a different game entirely.
The problem with your want and unrealistic demand is that it dampens the importance of choice almost entirely. If everyone can be everything then literally nothing and no one is unique. It’s an RPG so unfortunately we shouldn’t and won’t be allowing this. They may have said they’d open things up(5+ years ago btw) but this means nothing, they don’t plan to actually do that and certainly not while Metzen is back in charge of the lore and story. Just find another game, if I wanted to be any class on any race I personally would just go choose one of the other MMOs that allow it instead of seeking to ruin WoW because deep down I hate WoW.
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They could easily just give everyone the horses and get back to that later, I mean everyone used to use the horses back in the day and I’m still mad they took it away from other races.
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You’re calling me the minority with 1000+ posts when the first reply came from someone with 20k. That’s not the average player, that’s the forum echo chamber. The wider player base has already shown they want more race/class freedom, and Blizzard has been moving in that direction for years. Remember when undead hunters were “lore breaking” until they weren’t. Tauren paladins were laughed at until Sunwalkers became part of the canon. Rogues and priests used to be locked down to just a few races but are now nearly universal. Monks were dropped onto every race at once in Mists and nobody questions it today. Even shaman started out as Horde only, but now you see dwarves and draenei wielding the elements like it’s always been that way. Every one of those changes was met with the same “it ruins the foundation” argument, and every single one is now just part of WoW’s fabric.
So no, it doesn’t kill uniqueness, it expands it. Lore has always adapted to the game’s needs, and pretending otherwise is just ignoring history.
Yea, that is kind of my point. Make it accessible, then add unique things later if necessary/requested. I’m just giving an idea on how it could happen lore wise. I guess my use of “hero class” is a bad word to the forum echo chamber, it literally wouldn’t change a thing except for the leveling experience of the new races added, kind of an homage to how they did monks.
Tauren Pally’s already stretched the lore enough so no thanx.
The only races I wouldn’t mind are Kul’tirans and maybe Pandas. Every other race doesn’t work.
This is the classic “Im a troll” response. “Oh you participate in the forums? That means you are too out of touch and dont know what the playerbase wants111!”
Id sooner listen to someone with a high post count than someone whose only time coming to the forums was to give one idea and then get mad when people disagree.
You arent reading, or at least comprehending, what people are saying. A lot of the posters here arent saying no to more paladins, their saying do it right.
Your idea is coming up with an arbitrary group to have every race arbitrarily join and get pally powers. No expansion to that races lore, no racial flare to tne mount, nothing interesting. Just “please sign here, hope you like the generic aesthetic we have!”
Thats not something i want to see, and a lot of people agree. Id rather have proper lore and racial flair on who gets paladin.
Hard disagree, if the class doesnt make sense for the culture and beliefs of the race then it shouldnt be playable to that race. Blizzard has already done some big blunders though, with stuff like LFD warlocks and Maghar warlocks, i dont want them to lean into it more.
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I get that you think I’m brushing off feedback, but that’s not what I’m saying. The point is that the forums naturally lean negative because the same regular posters are the ones who keep the discussions going. That doesn’t mean their opinions aren’t valid, but it does mean they aren’t the entire player base. When I brought up the echo chamber point it was because I was being told I was the “minority” for wanting more race/class freedom, when in reality most players outside the forums don’t think about restrictions at all until they bump into them. Blizzard has already expanded classes to races that were once thought impossible, so it’s not unreasonable to think they could do it again through a unifying theme like Midnight.
The Tauren Paladin were seen as very controversial, and yet estimates are about 4-5% of the paladin players play Tauren Paladin. That is ALOT more than the 20ish people on this thread. Even if, for example, gnomes were at 1%, that is a huge number of people.
Paladins make up about 12% of all characters. Tauren make up about 4% of all characters. If Tauren account for 4% of the Paladin pool, then you take 4% of 12%, which is 0.48%. That means roughly half of one percent of the entire player population are Tauren Paladins, or about 5,000 for every 1,000,000 characters.
I cant cite information, so you would have to look up Most Popular Races in World of Warcraft - Based on Character Creation Data on Icy Veins, dated Jan 30th 2025, and These Are the Most-Played Classes at Max Level in The War Within Patch 11.1.7 dated June 22nd 2025.
Because unless you have actual statistics supporting your claim you are. This is what happens when you try to speak for everyone. Unless you have everyone showing up to back you (which based on this threads responses you are definitely not the majority) you will be the minority of people.
Next time you have an idea dont make claims like “everyone wants this” or “a majority of players want”
So looking back at what you referenced:
Sunwalkers - got lore and unique racial flair
Undead hunters - i never saw anyone claiming its lore breaking. Everything i saw was the opposite; made no sense they couldnt be hunters. Same goes for every other hunter combo.
Monks - nobody questioned it because we had a lore reason why the class got expanded. Pandaren masters left the wandering isle and trained other races. Goblins and worgen had to wait until they had a start thst wasnt time locked.
Warriors, mages, Rogues, priests, warlocks, and hunters - blizzard deemed these classes “generic” essentially, there was no real cultural reason to restrict them going forward. (Personally i hard disagree with warlocks on this decision. Maghar, lfd, draenei, earthen, and haronir warlocks make no sense but 
the bell is rung)
The common denominator here is: most of the class race combos we got were deemed generic enough that any race could pick it up and learn it without needing a cultural or racial change to the lore. Note that, barring sunwalkers, they are also all the generic classes.
Pally, shaman, druid, demon hunter, evoker, etc… are too steeped in their own lore to become that generic.
Except you are, a lot of feedback has been: no we dont like your plan to homogenize the class, if blizzard does it theh should do it right.
And your reaction is “You have 20k posts on the forums, your just a negative echo chamber!”
Or you just keep throwing around the claim that you speak for the majority who “wants it now”
Yeah a lot of us forum veterans can be negative, stay in these forums for 10k posts and thatl happen, but that doesnt mean our thoughts and opinions should be brushed off.
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I guess it wouldn’t be the first time a race used a stand in. Dwarves had the human horse for a long time, and lightforged had the elekk for a while.
I’m surprised there’s still no Night Elf Paladins. Didn’t they tease that back in Legion?
And there should at least be Void Elf Paladins and Undead Paladins.
No its not, not every race worships the light the way original paladins did.
Why do you have to homogenize everything? Why is it so hard to understand not every race is equal?
I actually do, check at the bottom of this post, in my last point. I can’t claim to speak for everyone, but it’s also clear the forums aren’t representative of the full playerbase either. History shows plenty of changes that were called “minority wants” here ended up being widely adopted and celebrated, like transmog, cross-faction grouping, or even tauren paladins and undead hunters. So while I can’t say the majority outright demands more race/class freedom, I can say there’s consistent evidence that when Blizzard opens things up, players use it and it becomes normal.
You’re drawing a line between “generic” and “lore-steeped” classes, but Blizzard has already crossed that line multiple times. Tauren paladins were a huge stretch until Sunwalkers were written in after the fact. Troll druids suddenly appeared in Cataclysm with a Loa explanation and no one had predicted that either. Undead priests already bent lore because channeling the Light literally harms them, yet it was accepted as playable. Even shaman, which you list as steeped in lore, went from being a Horde-only spiritual practice to something dwarves and goblin picked up without issue. The pattern is clear: once Blizzard decides to make a combo happen, they create the story to support it and it eventually feels natural. Paladins are no different. If Midnight is about darkness and resistance, that’s the perfect moment for the Light to spread beyond its traditional roots.
What you’re describing is a strawman. Instead of engaging with the actual point I made, you’re reframing it into something easier to dismiss, like me supposedly just saying “you’re an echo chamber” or “I speak for the majority.” That’s not the argument I’m making. I’m pointing out that the forums don’t represent the entire player base and that Blizzard has a track record of making race/class combos work once they decide to.
I’m not pretending to speak for everyone, but neither can you, and I can certainly back my claims with math, and that is a much higher, tangible number than you can actually prove.
The forums lean negative because they’re full of long-time posters, but that doesn’t represent the wider player base. I’m giving an idea for how it “could” happen, not dictating exactly how it should.
And the math shows these “stretched” combos still get played. Paladins are about 12% of all characters, Tauren are about 4%, which works out to around 0.5% of the total population or, 5,000 per million characters. That’s ALOT of players, $70,000.00 per month in Blizzard terms.
Clearly even when lore was bent, people still rolled those characters, and the game was better for having the option.
**One question, I bet you don't have a good answer:**
How would it actually hurt you to see a gnome paladin, for example, running around? Your character doesn’t lose anything, your class fantasy doesn’t get weaker, and your race’s lore doesn’t vanish. It just means someone else gets to enjoy the game in the way they want.