Blizzard recently announced a serious shake-up to the class balance in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. In a post on their website, it was revealed that gamers playing the new races would have access to classes typically available only to the opposing faction. The new Alliance race, the draenei, will have the shaman class available; previously this was a Horde exclusive. Similarly, the Horde’s new blood elf race will be able to select the paladin class. In World of Warcraft, the idea behind the two classes was initially to give each faction access to a unique class with its own abilities and weaknesses. Breaking this wall should allow Blizzard more flexibility in class tuning, so that game play balance will be easier to maintain. It will be interesting to see if these changes will be enough to address the Alliance versus Horde population imbalance that one typically finds online. The Burning Crusade expansion should ship before the end of the year.