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Warcraft Wednesday: Death Knightery

(Warcraft Wednesday is a weekly column about things related to my experiences in and about World of Warcraft.)

Death Knights are a new class introduced with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft.  Like pretty much everyone else who plays the game, I created a new Death Knight character shortly after I got the expansion.  The DK is a little different from any of the other classes in the game.  All races can be one, and you have to have at least one other character at level 55 or better in order to create one.

Most of my characters are casters.  The closest thing I had to a melee class before was my shaman, who uses a lot of magic.  I didn’t really expect to have much fun playing the Death Knight, but it turned out to be pretty interesting.  The initial area for all Death Knights is spectacularly scripted and set up.  The story is terrific – it also has a lot of ‘holy shit’ moments involving well known characters.  Now I’ve been going through Outland with my DK, and it’s been going really fast.  Blizzard changed the leveling pace from 60-70, so it’s been pretty smooth sailing.  Though the Death Knight is a melee class, it has a lot of abilities and strategies to appeal to the caster in me.  It’s a much easier class for me to solo with, which explains why I’ve been able to play it more often than my other alts lately.

It’s a little interesting to me the different ways in which I play the Death Knight.  My style when I’m soloing with my other characters, even my shaman, could be termed a little timid.  I do my best to avoid fighting and I have to be careful to not bite off more than I can chew.  With the DK, I tend to rush headlong into any situation.  Four or five mobs? No problem.  A patrol just wandered in?  Bring them on.  I’m not trying to say I’m really good at it or anything, it’s just a little bit of a departure from my normal style.  It also helps that as an Unholy-specced DK, I get a ghoul minion that can do some damage.

I’ve died a lot.  For some reason, it doesn’t seem as frustrating as when I do that on my squishy characters.  Maybe it’s because I choose to enter battle with my DK, and on my casters I die mostly because of errors.  It’s been a lot of fun playing it so far, and I can only hope that Blizzard keeps innovating in gameplay.  Maybe a healing class next?  I really am a cleric at heart.