Full list of games

The Mages or Magi are the wizards of WoW. But if you think that the WoW Mages are benign looking characters from a Camelot fable then you will disappointed. This World of Warcraft guide on Mages looks at the class that is probably the best at dealing vast amounts of damage in combat with their "burst damage" abilities and at reducing adversaries to ridicule by transforming them into sheep with their crowd control talents.
Either Wow faction has a three races that can have Mages: Gnomes, Humans and Draenei on the Alliance and Undead, Trolls and Blood Elves on the Horde side. Their weapons include magical staves and wands and can also learn how to use daggers and one handed swords in later levels.
Mages spells are split into three school of Magic: Arcane, Fire and Frost.
Fire Mages are able to deal the most damage in comparison to Arcane and Frost Mages but are less effective at stunning or disabling opponents. This is the opposite of Frost Mages who have spells where they can freeze opponents to the point where they are totally immobile and unable to defend themselves.
Arcane Mages are more proficient at fulfilling utility roles like crowd control (turning enemies into sheep), creating food for the group or transporting themselves to different cities.
All Mages can mix up all these abilities of course, it's only at end game that a Mage should consider specializing in one particular talent tree to get the most out of World of Warcraft after reaching level 70 Warcraft.

The Holy Warrior Of WoW
Let me begin by saying this is certainly not a full World of Warcraft guide on Paladins. There is no way you could cram everything this most versatile of classes is able to do in a few paragraphs. It is merely an overview that will hopefully give you a small window in the world of the paladin, the holy warrior of WoW.
Paladins are a class of their own. They're said to be hybrids of warriors, Priests and other DPS classes like Mages or Warlocks. By the way, DPS means Damage Per Second which means a class which give out lots of melee damage or close combat damage.
Even if they borrow these specialist traits from classes who are better recognized for having them, the Paladin's use of them is so powerful that they are probably one of the most difficult classes in WoW to kill and get the better of in PvP (player versus player combat). As a warrior myself I tend to really steer away from them as they are the equivalent of fighting another equally well armoured warrior that not only can heal him or herself but can also cast spells. That is awesome power and imo quite unfair.
So Paladins specialize as tanks by having in one of their abilities tree called the "Protection Tree" spells and learned talents which enables them to both take and give enormous damage to and from several enemies at once. Special spells here include "Holy Shield", "Retribution", and "Consecration" which all add up to give the Paladin well sought after tanking abilities which for some raids and instances are far superior to that of any other class