I was reading this recent WoW Insider post talking about Retribution's seemingly non-Paladin role. The Paladin is almost by definition a good guy class (lore-wise, Paladins can only use their powers if they believe they are doing good with them,) and while slaying demons and the undead is totally in line with the Paladin's ideals (no soul? Nothing wrong with smashing it with a hammer.) Of course, Ret Paladins also kill other things.
Anyway, while WoW certainly has the mechanical underpinnings of an RPG and you have a degree of character customization, there's still not a lot you can do to really define your character in-game. The only class that really gets to totally redefine itself is the Priest. Holy and Discipline Priests are what you'd think of when you hear about Priests in other RPGs. Shadow Priests, however, are almost the complete opposite - the dark reflection of the "White Mage." Whereas pretty much all Paladins in-game are well-intentioned heroes of the Light (or equivalent source of Holy magic,) and all Mages are highly intelligent scholars who use their knowledge to blast things, Priests can, simply by switching specs, become members of completely opposing schools of thought.
What I would propose is a new mechanic - allowing you to choose at some point (much as you choose a specialization) between two opposing versions of your class. For example, a Paladin would choose between an Inquisitor or a Champion. A Rogue could choose between a Swashbuckler or a Spy. The idea, then, would be that the look of your spells and the way you interacted with NPCs would change to reflect the mindset your character had.
In truth, I'm not sure something like this could fit into WoW. The game is coming up on its fifth incarnation, and whether it's because of the nature of MMOs or just the way Blizzard does things, the roleplaying elements of it definitely not the focus.
That said, it would be cool to see such a thing in a game. Rather than having a single "good or bad" morality system that is applied to every class (something I think is generally done poorly outside of Mass Effect, as most games go with ridiculous moral decisions like "do you want to save this baby, or eat it?") you would have each class dealing with its own internal divide - its question of "what does it really mean that I am a Shaman?"
So, some examples:
Paladin: Inquisitor vs Champion (militant dedication to the one true church, or striking out as a knight errant to serve anyone in need)
Warrior: Soldier vs Barbarian (professional dedicated to discipline or wild man on the fringes, getting into bar fights.)
Death Knight: Death-seeker or Repentant (are you simply using your dark powers to become an unstoppable badass or are you trying to make up for what you did?)
Anyway, you can see the sort of things you'd be able to do with system like that.
Actually, about four years ago, a friend of mine and I starting coming up with an RPG idea that would be based almost entirely around this concept. The game would begin with four class options: Fighter, Scholar, Thief, and Survivalist. Every ten levels, the player would find their class branch off into two different ones (with a relevant shift in the story that accompanied it.)
So, for example, the first set of classes would break into:
Fighter: Soldier or Warrior
Scholar: Cleric or Sorcerer
Thief: Spy or Assassin
Survivalist: Hunter or Shaman
This class-splitting would occur two more times, ultimately giving you a selection of 32 classes (which I realize would be an absolute bitch to balance, but it would probably be a mostly single-player game,) so that halfway up the climb to the max level and the end of the game, someone who had chosen "Fighter" could be anything from the dual-wielding guns or axes "Anarchist" to the stronger-the-longer-he-fights "Paladin" to the nigh-indestructible "Arcane Guardian." They're all Fighters, but decidedly different flavors thereof.
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