During The Burning Crusade (TBC), I already had a Night Elf Rogue and a Human Priest. I wanted to try out the new Draenei race. The male Draenei were built like refrigerators, so I definitely wanted to select a beefy, melee class. All of the TBC promotional art and cinematics portrayed male Draenei as paladins, so it seemed I had only one choice.
Space Goats & Evil Elves
I think WoW did a fresh twist with the new races added in TBC. The Blood Elves, who were Warcraft’s typical Tolkienesque elf, were added to the beastly Horde. The Blood Elves are portrayed as sinister and arrogant, unlike how fantasy elves are typically portrayed as noble and serene. Before TBC, the Horde was composed only of monstrous, inhuman races. But most players wanted to play “pretty” characters, which lead to a massive play population imbalance favoring the Alliance. The aesthetic Blood Elves significantly increased the number of players (and their girlfriends) playing on Horde.
Before TBC, the Alliance were: humans, short humans, shorter humans, and purple humans. The monstrous, alien Draenei added some fresh diversity to the faction. But to contrast with their demonic appearance, the Draenei are always portrayed as benevolent and righteous.
Protection Paladins
I chose to make my Draenei a Protection Paladin. Since the previous classes I had played (Rogue, Shadow Priest) had the dark, edgy class fantasies, I thought it would be refreshing to play the most “goody two-shoes” class fantasy. A Draenei Protection Paladin is a massive 7’8″ guardian covered in plate and a giant shield. Despite their physical size, they depend on their connection with the Holy Light to protect them and their allies.
The Holy Light not only shields against attacks, also punishes the enemy for their aggression. What I liked the most about Protection Paladins were these sources of “thorns” damage. This meant that enemies would hurt themselves every time they attacked. Since Paladins didn’t have any sort of “cleave” ability, it was the most effective way to damage large groups of enemies.
While questing, I could tank several clusters of mobs. While mounted, I’d run through several packs of mobs, aggro another group with an Avenger’s Shield, and finally drop down a Consecration. With all the enemy’s attacking me, the thorns damage would do most of the work.
This method was actually a very effectively way for farming currency and power leveling. The WoW player “Hobbs” had some popular videos where he would pull the entire Scarlet Monastery Cathedral and kill them all. This made decent gold from selling cloth (which Humanoids were more likely to drop). Other players would also pay gold for this power-leveling service, as their low-level players could rapidly leech a lot of experience.
Bloodborne
A few years later during Cataclysm, my brothers and I decided to reroll as Horde. I leveled a Goblin Shaman and few other alts. Eventually, I wanted to play a Paladin again but didn’t want to start from scratch. I think with one of expansion upgrades gave a free character transfer. I used it to transfer Korseke from a Draenei Paladin into a Blood Elf Paladin.
Blood Elf Paladins were originally perverted contradictions. Rather then devotion to the Light, they harvested Holy magic from a Naaru imprisoned in Silvermoon City. They manipulated Holy magic like any other kind, and viewed it simply as a weapon against the Scourge that annihilated their people. In TBC, they kept this flavor by renaming the Paladin abilities to match the themes of blood and vengeance. The Blood Elves were not true Paladins; they instead labeled themselves as "Blood Knights".
From Cataclysm onward, I leveled the Blood Elf Korseke as Retribution. The mechanics for Protection had changed significantly, and no longer had the “thorns” mechanics that I enjoyed so much. Retribution was also reworked significantly and turned into a competitive DPS spec.
During Mists of Pandaria, the opportunity came to play as a Holy Paladin for my brother’s 3s team. With their Shadow Priest and Affliction Warlock, we had reformed our Shadowplay comp.
During Warlords of Draenor, Korseke was the first character I mained. My brothers and I eventually got back into the Arena. We played a couple of sessions as Turbocleave (Arms Warrior, Enhancement Shaman, & Holy Paladin) to moderate success. But the expansion made so many changes to the game that we just weren’t enjoying it as much. We gradually played less and less until we finally called it quits.
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