Spooncraft

Alright this is going to be a big post. People are pretty vocal about their thoughts on the Death Knight class. I am pretty much jumping for joy at this prospect but am holding my tongue at first until we get a little further down the Beta road and get some more security as to what will and will not be in the final release of Wrath of the Lich King.

One such discussion (of a few I’ll be talking about here) is this quoted from the general forums: I think its stupid blizzard is only releasing one class that everyone is going to play. They should maybe think about releasing shadow hunter or demon hunter in the game. NOW that would be cool and fun.

Obvious Troll is obvious I know, but still let’s give the benefit of the doubt here and we’ll discuss things. Personally I think the guy is a moron like many others but that’s my own personal opinion.

I thought this was going to be like a “yo mama” joke thread. Now, I’m just disappointed.

Here’s the skinny, the lowdown, the 411 etc on the death knight choice.

First off, it fits in with Northrend extremely well for obvious reasons.

Second off, many people tend to have this strange belief that adding a new class is simple, easy as pie, and a cakewalk all on a Sunday afternoon, but it’s not. There is a lot of work that goes into it and many considerations for how it will work, how it will work with other classes, how the lore ties in, how quests and npcs also can tie in to this new class, itemization, and a whole lot more. It takes a lot of forethought, testing, and care to add something this major to the game and for each new class that is added to the game, come the concerns about not maintaining the uniqueness of each class that already exists.

I’m not saying that the possibility of more classes being added in the future isn’t a possibility. We had many ideas of what class we’d add in for Wrath of the Lich King prior to settling on the death knight. There are many more possibilities for classes we’d consider in the future as well, but we aren’t going to rush to add them in and risk creating a situation where other classes lose their uniqueness and their value within the game.

You may think we’re being stupid, but we don’t. (src) TLDR version: We know what we’re doing. Nethaera goes into detail again assuring the masses (as if anybody listened) Every class is getting looked at and the death knight is being created to fit in and balance in with all of the other classes as well. While the death knight is being created to be unique, it is not being created to be more powerful than any other class. (src)

So obviously every class is going to get some love. Look at the game now and pretend we know NOTHING of the Death Knight. Who’s considered overpowered. People say warriors, rogues, warlocks, hell even paladins. One class is not going to trump all of them come on people have some sense. Then there’s the whole issue with Death Knights starting at level 55 (which is awesome and I think should be a feature for all classes pending the account holder has reached some landmark) and them being an easy-mode class.

Easily learned? I guess that would depend on your own capabilities as a gamer. We feel that this class is being designed to be challenging to learn and that is why we have a quest series lined up just for the death knight and just for learning how to play one. Easier to learn than other classes isn’t the intention and there will be some challenge simply in changing your mindset to how the rune resource system works. Impossible to learn? No. That wouldn’t be all that fun. (src)

In the end you’re looking at people getting very bothered and very sandy over something they knopw nothing at all about. Even the infamous Alpha details that most of us have seen are very sketchy or unfinished. This is similar to people getting into fist fights over the interpretation of a pictionary drawing.