Death Knight – First Impressions
So, after 2 weeks of not playing any MMOs (and consequently not making any blog posts) I decided to pick up Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) this weekend.
First thing I did, of course, was to try out the Death Knight (DK). I hadn’t any intention of buying WotLK this soon, so currently have no motivation to level any of my existing characters. I’d heard the DK starter instance was fun, and I had nothing to do Saturday evening, so I thought why not?
After the usual niggling UI issues (god I hate messing with the UI, but I also hate the default UI) I get myself set-up, installed, updated and am good to go. So, to the character creation screen. This, unsurprisingly took forever, as it does every time I make a character. At least now I don’t have to worry too much about the hair style, as this can now be changed at the barber shop. I finally settled on a female Orc, as they have a nice balance of looking bulky yet slender in plate armour. So Schoz (original I know) was born, and into the starting instance I went. I wont give too much away on the storyline, but suffice to say its really quite fun, and even if you don’t intend on leveling a DK you should do the starter area.
As you can see from the picture below, the DK starts out with some pretty cool looking armour.
The starter area quests are varied and interesting, and take you through a storyline for your character, rather than the seemingly random quests you get throughout most of the game. You’re nicely introduced to all the skills, the unique systems that the DK class has, and you’re gradually spoon fed talents. All this enables you to quite comfortably pick up a class at level 55 and not feel overwhelmed.
The highlight of course was flying a giant nether drake type thingy, which kicks ass. It also gives you a taste of the new vehicle system WoW has introduced, allowing you to fire from said drake whilst flying around and dodging projectiles.
As far as the class mechanics go, I have to say I love them. The rune and runic power systems allow you to effectively grind constantly, not having to worry about going out of mana or anything like that. Also all the drain moves allow you to keep your health points up almost indefinitely. I decided to spend my talents in the blood tree, allowing me more drains, and more single target damage. This seems to be working out wonderfully for me, however most other DKs I’ve seen around seem to have gone unholy. Unholy does look quite cool, but to be honest it interests me the least of the 3 trees currently. I’m sure I’ll try all 3 at some point though.
Anyway, the Dk starter area gets you a nice set of blue gear throughout the quests, and chucks you out at about lvl58. See picture below for the blue gear, the graphics are awesome. By lvl58 this was already the coolest looking character I’ve ever had; it is a pity that there’s 500 others running around on my server looking exactly the same though.I zipped straight over to Outlands at this point, and started doing the Hellfire quests. I have to say this class seems infinitely more powerful than any of the other classes I’ve done at this level (Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, Priest) and I’ve zipped through the whole of Hellfire with surprising speed. Even 2 man quests that were pretty hard for 2 guys (the Blacktalon guy ion the cave) I managed to easily solo without dropping below about 60% hp. I’m currently sitting part-way into 62, and will be moving onto Zangamarsh later on.
Quite how long I’ll keep this up I’m not sure. I imagine I’ll get to about the 68-72 range and then move back to WAR for a bit, possibly when the new tank classes come out there. I’m looking forward to trying Black guard.
In other news I’ve been playing a fair bit of Fable 2 this week. I’ve heard mixed reviews from other people (mainly about it not being as “free roaming” as it suggests) but I have to say so far I’m having a blast. The button mashing combat is simple yes satisfying in its design, and the spell system seems to work nicely. I’ve not quite got the hang of all the interactions with citizens in the various towns yet, but that’s not really my main focus at the moment anyway. I’ve already managed to upgrade to a cool looking bandit uniform (from some guy with a husky voice that sounded like a certain bad guy in Red Dwarf who’s name I can’t remember) and a two-handed mace that’s entirely too large to be practical.
More updates on both games coming soon!
