Having weaseled my way into the Wrath of the Lich King beta, here’s a few interesting points about the Death Knight experience. Bear in mind all of this is doubtless available elsewhere, since the NDA got lifted on the 18th of last month. I’m not claiming a first exclusive or anything, it’s just the things that stuck out at me.

You spawn your new Death Knight next to the Lich King, supposedly the most powerful being in the WoW universe. It’s a sad commentary on how over-the-top the raid armor is in this game when even the Lich King himself has smaller spaulders.

You start as a level-55 character, as you may have been aware of by now. The talent trees for the new class are 50-deep, same as the other classes, but you don’t start out with any talent points. So, how do you earn them? You get them as bonuses for finishing quests in the starting area, where you’re laying siege to a Scarlet Crusade town in the Eastern Plaguelands. They come at a good clip, so you get that same feeling of progress from leveling, just faster.

One of the early quests involves winning five duels against fellow death knight initiates. The reward is a PVP trinket and a talent point. It’s an odd beginner quest since you would think someone who’s eligible to start a Death Knight would be more than familiar with PVP by now. If PVP isn’t your thing, there are NPC characters to duel against.

In true death knight fashion, several of your first quests involves killing civilians who con grey to you. Picking on the weak indeed.

The new spell effects, particularly for the Icy Touch ability, are tits.

Its always bugged me that the concept of “threat,” the invisible statistic that determines which player a given monster attacks, is absolutely crucial to the game but is represented nowhere in the default UI. Looks like they’re going to put some work into that for this expansion. I’ve gotten scrolling combat text for “lost threat” “losing threat” and “Attacking you!”.

Ever notice how giant bird skeletons look kind of reedy and not very majestic? Same goes for skeletal gryphon mounts. Ew.

You have to assassinate a “Mayor Quimby.” Har-de-har, Blizzard. Please carry on using pop culture references instead of actual humor.

The “Death Grip” ability has been public for a while, but I didn’t realize how awesome it is to have a pull ability that literally pulls your target to you. Sure, it’s probably going to be awful in PVP, as are all effects that remove player control, but it’s sure fun for the tutorial area.

More commentary coming, I’m sure. I bet this is going to take up some of my time this week.

Popularity: 2% [?]