Oyayu

Arguably the largest change that is coming in Wrath of the Lich King is the introduction of our first hero class, the Death Knight. Now, I personally went through varying emotions revolving around the Death Knight. The first was joy that they were adding a new class to the game, then there was disappointment when we found out they were only adding one new class to the game. Now I’ve tried it out, it’s somewhere in-between, Death Knight is most definitely cool. The armor, the attitude, the big massive sword. There is of course the doubt in the back of my mind that they should be adding two new classes, so people at least get some choice in the matter… Instead at current rate we’re going to have half the server running around the Death Knight starter area come the 5th of when it’s ready.

On with my first impressions. The character creation screen would be the obvious place to start. Unlike the other characters you get to start at level 55, and you don’t get kitted out in rags like the other classes, you get some very impressive looking armor.

Upon entering the game you don’t get the race-specific entry movie, you get a special one for Death Knights which gives you a little background and introduces you to the Death Knight starting area. I’ve included a video of this below, obviously the usual spoiler warnings apply.

You immediately come face to face with The Lich King himself, who following the usual spiel about death, doom and destruction he sets you off into Acherus to begin your training as a Death Knight. Your first quest earns you your Rune Blade, which is the basis of everything that a Death Knight is. The mechanics themselves are relatively simple, you have a set number of Runes, which you need to use abilities or cast spells, these runes replenish themselves over time. You also have a rage-like Runic Power which is also needed for some abilities.

The quests that you get within the first hour or so of playing your Death Knight are highly entertaining, and very rewarding, not only do you get a slew of blue quality armor, you are also awarded the talent points you would have gotten from levelling to 55 yourself. The quests range from controlling a floating eye to scout out the area below Acherus, hiding in a mine cart to be snuck behind enemy lines, through to stealing a horse. As you can probably tell, this is not your ordinary starting area, but what else would you expect for a Hero class?

The experience flows surprisingly fast while in the Death Knight area, I made it to 57 in just a few hours and I have still not completed the area, so I will get back to you once the area is complete and I have been turned out into the real world.

My main concern for Death Knight is the starting area come release day. I have painful visions of 400 Death Knights running around wreaking all kinds of havoc, but ultimately not getting a lot done. This was somewhat relieved when I saw the area on the beta servers, there were a lot of Death Knights around, and I mean a lot, however the quests were all still completable without too much hanging around waiting for re-spawns… So hopefully Blizzard will have planned for this effectively. Just be warned when you have to go and kill Mayor Quimby, I’d definitely advise getting in a group for that one, even if it’s just a group with the random others on that quest.

Overall, Death Knight is very fun to play, the Rune system is interesting, and I can see it becoming quite complex without being too restrictive to play. The starting area and quests are exceedingly fun, and even if you don’t have any intentions on levelling Death Knight seriously (is there anyone?) then you should at least take one through here just to experience the quests.

After getting up and finding a beta invitation in my inbox, I spent most of the day basically downloading the client, and patching it. After a 2gb client download, and another 750mb or so worth of patches, I finally had it all up and ready to go.

The login screen itself is the first striking thing you will notice, as with TBC we’ve had a change of scene and are presented with a striking blue ice tundra, with a skeletal dragon to boot.

I copied my hunter over, but the first port of call was obviously to create a Death Knight, that is a post in its own rights though, so I will leave that until tomorrow when I have escaped the confides of the Death Knight starting area. You can check out some screenshots from my first few escapades as a Death Knight in the WotLK Beta screenshot gallery.

Back to my Hunter. The talent trees have undergone a mass of changes, but to keep it simple at this point of time I decided to revert to my favoured Beastmastery grinding tree, with the new talents in it and the new pet changes, this was still the obvious choice to me. The end-of-tree talents allows you to tame a variety of so-called “exotic” pets - which I was exceedingly excited to hear included the Devilsaurs from Un’goro crater.

Once my spec was taken care of, I hopped on a flight to Un’goro to find myself a Dinosaur. Rawr! It didn’t take me very long, and after a brief spell as the worlds largest ice cube, I had myself a massive new pet. I named him Schozie after a friend, and set him to work to test him out. I have included a video below so you can check him out!

The next thing for me to check out was the barber shop. I was happy to see that both my Undead Rogue and Blood Elf Hunter could both have pig tails now. The interface itself is still a little buggy I found, you had to really get the camera in just the right position to even be able to see your own character, but other than that, paying 7g for a new hair cut is a good way of keeping an expanding economy under control I suppose. Not that my Hunter needed another gold sink after respeccing at least 3 times a week on various whims, it was a massive achievement if my respec costs were ever below 50g…. I digress. The hairstyles on offer are just models you can see on other races in effect, the pig tails are blatently from gnomes, and I’m sure when I dig a little further there will be many other same models from other races, but that doesn’t really matter, it lets you add some variety, which is always good.

So all-in-all, my first few steps into Wrath of the Lich King have been as expected, there are some changes, there are some similarities, hopefully tomorrow I will get around to the nitty-gritty of Northrend and trying out some of the new quests they’ve put in.