Another thing to remember about the paladin's spells is that they get smite options via spells. In the playtest I kept a few concentration spells, a utility, and then the rest were smite options.
You just focused on the one snipit that I added in about MAD. I wasn't trying to bring up the 3.5 MAD as a reason why they shouldn't be restricted to LG, just noting the two reasons why my groups almost never saw a Paladin at the table. I worded the sentence to say that the MAD was "partly the...
I disagree. Throughout the years of playing 3.5/Pathfinder I have only seen one Paladin being played. Partly due to the MAD it had and the strict requirement to be LG. The idea of a CG "the greater good comes first" style Paladin sounds like a breath of fresh air to a musty-old-under-used class...