Note: Since WotLK is still early in it’s release, I have divided this post into not-spoilers and spoilers. In the top part is spoiler-free but clicking more below will reveal a fair amount about the quests and structure of both the Death Knight area in WotLK.
Last night I finally got my copy of WotLK installed having gotten it on lunch. After a couple minutes of upgrading my account, etc., I got in (I did most of the software patching the other night which took about three hours). Once in the game I had the option to enter using one of my old toons or create a brand new Death Knight. I deleted one of my lowbie alts and created a Forsaken Death Knight and away I went. (More info in the spoilers section.)
Let me just say that Blizz is the market leader in this field for a reason and last night was non-stop fun for me. You know you’re having fun when you realize that three hours have passed and you still can’t stop exploring and questing. Logging off was actually painful, it was that much fun. Many of the things I saw and did were available in other games I’ve played but, true to form, Blizz put their own spin on them and made them shine. I highly recommend trying the Death Knight even if you roll one just to get through the starting instance. It’s well worth it.
As Tobold said recently:
I prefer the term quality of execution over the term ‘polish’, but however you call it, Wrath of the Lich King has oodles of it. And if I compare it with the last two major MMORPGs released, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, I can only say that Wrath of the Lich King wins easily in the quality department. That isn’t to say that somebody can’t prefer the faster combat of AoC, or the PvP of WAR. WoW remains WoW, and if you prefer a fundamentally different sort of game play, WotLK won’t deliver that. But at no point in Wrath of the Lich King does one have the impression that one is playing an outdated game.
I agree. I don’t think other game companies start out wanting to create unfun things. They start off with a fun concept and implement it. The difference is that Blizzard then refines that basic idea and mechanic until every aspect of it shines. The siege engines in WAR worked. The siege engines in WoW worked AND every aspect of them was fun. Aiming them was fun. Using them was challenging. I still think WAR is a good game and I’m still enjoying LotRO, but both Mythic and Turbine could learn a few things from Blizzard in taking a basic idea and implementing it in such a way as to inspire the wonder most people expect from their fantasy games.
Next up, I’ll actually have to get my warrior into the new zones.
Clicking next will open up the spoiler part.
Note: Here there be spoilers. I recommend avoiding this section if you really want to play through the DK area with fresh eyes. If you’ve already got a DK or don’t particularly care about seeing the content without having first heard about it, then read on.
Death Knights come into the world at level 55 in their home base of Acherus: The Ebon Hold which is a platform hovering over Light’s Hope Chapel in the Eastern Plaguelands. When they start off, they’re evil. Really evil. Kicking puppies evil. Several of the intro quests will have players killing villagers and townsfolk many of whom plead for their lives as you’re killing them. Many of the quests are of the kill x of y variety and I won’t go into those in too much detail. The real fun, imho, is in some of the oddball quests.
In one quest, I assumed control of a great eye and reconed the town below. It’s neat because, as the eye, I could hover overhead and send waves of minions below to attack and distract the townsfolk.
In another quest, I disguised myself in a mining cart which a worker NPC was more than happy to tote past elite defenders to get me to the deck of a ship. Once there, I used one of the deck guns to blast troops on the beach. The troops could also attack me on the ship. Fortunately, my attacks with the cannon came in two varieties: the standard ranged bombardment and another which insta-killed anyone near me. It was a lot of fun alternating between ranged blasting and locally defending my position.
The aiming and targetting apparatus was also neat. When moving the gun I could see a semi-sphere appear on the ground and an arc which indicated where my fire would land. The controls, I noticed, were still in the third-person viewpoint. When I operated a siege engine in WAR, the controls are first person. I prefer the third-person point of view. The aiming arc and sphere make aiming less problematic than it otherwise could be and I could see more of my surroundings in third person which was key to being able to defend myself.
Another bomb-type quest took place over Havenshire (New Avalon?). I took control of a giant skeletal bird and was charged with eliminating defenders and catapults. The bird has an energy attack and, similar to the cannon, an arc-and-sphere aiming gizmo to show where I was shooting. It was a LOT of fun doing strafing runs to blow up the defenders and their equipment and then doing fancy maneuvers to avoid ground fire. Defenders die in mass when you hit them but catapults take a couple hits to bring down. One note here: do not die during the run if you can avoid it. Do not get dismounted either. There’s no timer so if your bird is getting low on health, just fly back to base, dismount and then remount. You’ll get a new shiny bird with full health and mana. I made the mistake of trying to dismount on a nearby hilltop to summon a new bird and ground fire killed me instantly. Also: when flying the bird, it’s the bird that takes the damage, not you.
Another quest that stands out was the quest for the epic mount. Initially, all you have to do is steal a horse. The horse in this case behaves a lot like a vehicle (I was thinking of Halo vehicles as I was riding off with the horse). There’s even an ‘exit vehicle’ button to dismount. Dismount the horse via the controls near the quest-giver to get credit for it and then it’s on to part two. In part two, you need to defeat a death knight on his horse. The quest-giver phases you into the death world where the other players and NPCs don’t exist and the death knights and several other NPCs do. It’s a neat cinematic effect and the world changes around you in the death space. After defeating the knight, I went back to where the quest giver was and used a horn to call him (he isn’t visible at first, he needs to be summoned). He brought me back to the living world and gave me the mount skill. I loved the world-and-the-world-beneath mechanic. It was brilliantly done and pretty much sums up most fantasy in my eyes: anything is possible and even the mundane holds magic if only we could see it.
Other fun facts:
- Spec trees for the DK are blood, ice, and unholy. I went with unholy and its emphasis on minions and control. I can summon a gargoyle to strafe targets and the minion whom I get by targeting a nearby corpse is controllable as a pet. From what I understand, blood is the DPS tree and ice is the tanking tree. I’ve only ever specced unholy so I have no direct experience there.
- Points for your spec are accumulated as quest rewards (along with a great-looking set of armor). Do ALL the intro quests. They’re fun and in the end you’ll look awesome and have a ton of points to spec yourself out. (I really lament having to trade in my awesome DK armor for Outland crap. The DK armor is all blues and will stand up for a couple levels, at least, in Outland. Still, at some point it will need replacing and I’ll look and feel less epic. *sigh*)
- You will have a return-home ability which brings you back to the temple for training and rune forging. One thing you will not have right away is a hearthstone. Talk to an inn-keeper (any inn-keeper) and tell them you want to set your hearthstone there. As part of the deal, they’ll give you a hearthstone. Now that’s service!
Throughout the process of leveling my DK, I was thinking about how WoW differs from most of its competitors. Blizzard is not an innovator. There isn’t a single piece of the Death Knight area which I hadn’t seen in one way, shape or form in another game. Siege engines I saw in WAR. The world-changes-as-the-character / plot advances thing I saw in LotRO (the human / hobbit starter area of Archet). I’m sure similar concepts have been created for other games as well. Blizzard refined their implementation to the point where all the tedium was gone and all players were left with was a fun, exhilarating experience.
After the DK starter area, I went out to Outland to begin questing there. Death Knight was such a blast in the starting zone, I’m hoping the shininess doesn’t wear off as I slog through Outland to get to Northend.
