1up.com recently featured an article about the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Chris Metzin is interviewed and discusses several plans for the expansion. Here are some of the highlights:

• A more personal experience in WotLK. You will feel more engaged in the overall story.
• Death Knight will start our around level 60 (nothing new here)
• Some information on flying mounts and confirming they will not be immediately usable.

It is a good read, head over and check it out!

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King PC Preview

Bornakk took the initiative to answer some Deathknight questions as posed on the official forums:

Q u o t e:
-Everyone will roll death knight alts because they startat lvl 60, so they have less work to do.

We do hope a lot of people try out the class, it should be a lot of fun. But we also know that people have their preferred style of play so we don’t expect everybody to drop their current character(s) and play the Death Knight exclusively.

Q u o t e:
-It forces you to master a class in high-level areas where you need to know your class to suceed, and most new Death knights won’t know how to play their class at all.

Just leveling up to reach Northrend will take time and should provide players some great experience in learning the new class.

Q u o t e:
-You will get less hours out of your death knight alt.

I’m a little confused here, but are you saying that it’s a problem that you can’t spend more hours at lower levels?

Q u o t e:
-Other classes will fall out of favor for alts, because they start at lvl 1, wheras Death Knights start at 60.

I’m not sure that other classes falling out of favor as alts is really a big deal, but I wanted to clarify that the starting level of the Death Knight has not been finalized, but they will start at a higher level as a level 1 Death Knight doesn’t sound quite right.

Q u o t e:
-The massive flood of Death Knights will clog battlegrounds, making matches extremely uneven (No class variety, so less heals, druid bufs, etc.)

While a lot of people may make Death Knight alts to try out the class, especially near the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, not everybody is going to level them to 80 or switch them to their main character. Also, both factions will be interested in playing the Death Knight, so any lack of heals will probably go both ways.

Q u o t e:
-The lack of levels to obtain takes away what makes WoW so fun: Leveling up and gaining new abilities.

They will still need to level through Outland and Northrend which can take a fair amount of time.

Q u o t e:
-New players will have to wait months to try a class they may have wanted from the beginning.

We have not finalized way that the Death Knight will be unlocked yet, if that is what you are referring to.

We have wanted to make Hero Classes for a long time and we feel the Death Knight will be a fun one to start with while adding a great new element to the game for players to enjoy fighting with… and against.

Bornakk also went on to answer a few other questions. When questioned about a 3rd faction, he replied:

While hearing murloc noises already makes me shudder, the Alliance and the Horde are a strong basis to build a story of conflict and war for players to experience and we have no plans at this time of adding a third playable faction. We are happy with the way the two factions are “interacting” in the game and plan to continue weaving the story around them.

And when questioned about the way vanish works:

While we are always evaluating abilities and making changes as appropriate, we have no current plans to change how vanish works. Hope that helps.

Source

Death Knight
- One idea for the Death Knight class is that you’ll start in Stratholme and have to break your way out.
- Two Death Knight spells mentioned: Army of the Dead (the one from the trailer) which summons a bunch of undead minions, and Death and Decay, which is an AOE spell.
- One idea for an ability is Blood Boil, a damage-over-time ability that after the duration lights up two of your blood runes.
- Generally Blood runes are damage-oriented, Frost are control-oriented, and Unholy are utility and DOT mechanics.

Via MMO-Champion.com, we have some new information on Wrath of the Lich King.

buffed.de interviewed Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) during the Games Convention in Germany and revealed some new information on the WotLK expansion.

• The new Caverns of Time instance will be Stratholme (5 players, level 80 instance). You will be tasked with helping Arthas to cleanse Stratholme of the scourge, including burning the town to the ground!
• The required level for Death Knight probably will not be level 80 to avoid any rush just to unlock it. It could possibly be between 55 and 60. Once you reached the required level you create your Death Knight and face some challenges. If you have mastered them, you will get your Death Knight.
• Runes combination will unlock different abilities for the Death Knight. You can use up to 6 runes and there isn’t any restriction (6 unholy, 2 unholy 2 frost 2 blood, 3 frost 3 blood, etc …). For example you will need blood an unholy runes to use “Army of the dead”, and won’t be able to use it if you’ve only got frost runes.
• Future hero classes could be Demon Hunter, Arch Mage, and Blademaster.

buffed: Now, to the topic: We heard a lot of things about Wrath of the Lich King at BlizzCon. Have there been any news since?
Jeff: There are a few things that we did not talk about at BlizzCon. The most important thing is the new Caverns of Time instance Stratholme. We wanted to return to the Caverns of Time concept because it is one of the coolest things we released for World of Warcraft: and we wanted to persue what the Bronze Dragon is up to. We want to show you some of the coolest moments of Warcraft. And now we chose Stratholme. Players of World of Warcraft already know Stratholme and many hardcore players are great fans of the old Stratholme instance. Warcraft 3 players however know Stratholme from a singleplayer mission, in which Arthas travels to the city and sets all buildings on fire, kills the citizens and fights Mal’Ganis. In Wrath of the Lich King you fight at Prince Arthas’ side, by travelling through the Caverns of Time. We are giving you the opportunity of meeting Arthas at a time at which he was not a great villain yet. You are “cleaning” Stratholme and igniting buildings!

buffed: Awesome! For how many players is this instance designed?
Jeff: It will be a five player instance, but for level 80 characters. We think that players will not enter the Caverns of Time while they are levelling, but return to them at level 80.

buffed: Have you already decided which race the Death Knight will base on? If one plays a Gnome, will the Death Knight be a Gnome too?
Jeff: Yes, we have already made a decision. But do not be surprised if we decide to change our minds. You know, game design is a very flexible job. Right now, every race can become a Death Knight, even Gnomes. We have thought about some things since BlizzCon. Characters most likely will not have to be level 80 to unlock the Death Knight, it will probably be earlier. Levelling to level 80 like a maniac to unlock the Death Knight simply is not fun. It makes people rush through the game. That is why we will make it differently. We have many ideas, but we have not decided on one yet. Maybe the Death Knight will be unlocked between level 55 and 60. Then you create your Death Knight and face some challenges. If you have mastered them, you will get your Death Knight.

buffed: But the newly created level 55 to 60 character will not become a Death Knight, or will it?
Jeff: No, the old character stays. You just get an additional one. You know, many players give their characters names related to their class. There are many names specific to Druids…

buffed: You mean names like “ilove2spooch” in the World of Warcraft Southpark episode?
Jeff: (laughs) Yes, exactly. There are many names like that. And many just would not fit and that is why we are giving the players the chance to give their Death Knights a new, suitable name.

buffed: Can you give us some details about the Death Knight’s abilities?
Jeff: Sure. The resourcing system is completely different and is based on runes. At Blizzard we are concentrating on making the characters differ from each other as much as possible. The best example are Rogue and Warrior. The Rogue uses combo points and the Warrior rage - quite a difference. When we started developing the Death Knight, we wanted it to feel distinct. That is why we gave him runes, which can be ingraved to his weapon, an axe or sword. There are three different types of runes: blood, unholy and frost. Depending on how you combine them, you get different abilities. The maximum you can have is six, and you can combine them in any way you want. For example: you could use two of each type of rune, or you could use four unholy runes and two blood runes, because you want to tank with your Death Knight. Or you could change your rune configuration for PVP battles. If you use your abilities you consume those runes, however. We have one skill called “Army of Dead”, which summons Ghouls. Right now you need unholy and blood runes for that ability, I believe. If you only had frost runes ingraved on your weapon, you could not use that ability. We have developed a pretty cool system that makes the runes on your weapon glow if you change the combination.

buffed: Last question: the Death Knight is only the first of many hero classes. Which hero class would you like to introduce next?
Jeff: My favority? That is hard to say. I think the Demon Hunter would be extremely cool. The Arch Mage would be cool too…
buffed: (whispers) Blade Master!
Jeff: (laughs) There are many options, among them, of course, the fantastic Blade Master. We did a lot of brain storming and also thought about classes that were not present in Warcraft 3. But we wanted to advance slowly and introduce the Death Knight first in Wrath of the Lich King. And then we will see what is next.

In a recent podcast interview at 1up.com, Cory Stockton, WoW’s lead level designer gave a few hints on the upcoming Death Knight class.  The more notable points of interest include:

• Doing the quest to unlock a DK will give you a new hero slot, in which you can make a DK.
• This means you would need to redo it if you wanted to make a second DK; it’s unknown whether you can have more than one hero slot per realm, though.
• This also means you (hopefully) won’t be stopped from making one by having ten characters on a realm.

He also mentions that future hero classes will be added in future expansions.  So it is likely Death Knights will be all we see for a while!

Legendary Thread with Cory Stockton - WOW Insider

MMO-Champion posted up a great recap of Blizzcon

Wrath of the Lich King
Level Cap: 80 (New talent (up to 51 points tier) will be added to every class.)
Skill Cap: 450
Continent: Northrend
Number of Zones: 10 (tentatively), for levels 68 and above
Profession: Inscription
Class: Death Knight (first-ever Hero Class)
Features: Outdoor PVP zone with siege weapons and destructible buildings.
Beta: Only closed beta announced for the moment
Release date: Unknown, but probably beginning of 2008.

Leveling

• Leveling from 70 to 80 should take the same amount of time as 60 to 70. Don’t expect this to go too fast because Blizzard won’t let you use your flying mount in Northrend at the beginning. They’re planning to keep you grounded until level 75 or 78 before you can use your uber netherdrake again.

Inscription

• Inscription will be the new profession of the expansion. It will let you customize spells and abilities, for example you could make your fireball crit more often, or change the casting time of a healing spell.
• You will also be able to create a totally new type of items, but there isn’t any particular information about them yet.

Hero Classes

• The hero class will be created on a new character slot once you completed the quest, you won’t lose your original character.
• The Death Knight should be the only hero class of the expansion, the devs want to see how the Death Knight works out before talking about new Hero Classes.

Death Knight

• This is a tanking/DPS class, you will be able to tank with a 2H or duel wielding
• Any race can become a Death Knight
• You unlock the ability to create the Death Knight when finishing the tough quest chain, your character will not be overwritten, it will be retained (so you are not losing something to gain something)
• Death Knight’s will spawn into the world at a high level, they are still deciding which level you will start out at, 55,60, and level 70 have been discussed as possible starting points
• You will not be Kill on Sight from your own faction, so you will still be able to browse the AH, there will be flavor differences with NPCs however, expressing their distrust of Death Knights
• You get to choose your own type of Runeblade. You can choose from a traditional sword Runeblade or an axe variant
• Death Knight abilities are dictated by 3 runes : Blood, Frost, and Unholy.
• Your abilities will depend on how many of each rune you have. From what I saw from the demonstration, their are 6 slots for runes, so a balanced build would be 2 blood, 2 frost and 2 unholy. Spells will work like you use a spell that requires 1 blood rune, that blood rune is now on cooldown. Some spells will require like 4 of a rune for that ability to be used.
• There will be talents to reduce the cooldown on runes (Talent trees are Blood, Frost and Unholy)
• You will be able to summon minions but it is not the focal point of the class, it is just an accent to it, kind of like how Frost mages deploy their water elementals, summoning minions will not be integral to how you play the Death Knight
• You will wear plate armor
• The armor is said to be bulky and threatening like Arthas’s armor. It will not look exactly like his. There were several different armor variations shown during the presentation that were definitely showing Death Knight look but also not looking like exact copies of Arthas’s gear.

Known Death Knight skills

• Unholy Embrace
  Instant Cast. 5 min cooldown.
  Target is embraced by a silhouette of darkness for 6 seconds, corrupting any healing spells and effects cast upon or currently affecting the target to cause damage for 50% of their healing potential instead of restoring health. Any damage shields cast upon or currently affecting the target will also be instantly consumed, dealing 50% of their absorption potential in damage. Once afflicted with Unholy Embrace, the target cannot be afflicted with Unholy Embrace again for 1 minute.
• Army of the Dead
  Raises several temporary minions (ghouls)

Zones
Having learned a valuable lesson about funneling 8.5 million players into once single starting zone with The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King lets players pick a zone on either side of the continent to start from: Borean Tundra in the west or Howling Fjord in the east. Each zone has level-equivalent quests (appropriate for approximately level 68 through 72) and one Hellfire Peninsula-style instance hub with multiple dungeon wings for level 70 characters, level 80 characters, and raiders. While Northrend immediately calls to mind ice and snow, Blizzard doesn’t want to make those themes dominate Northrend completely-expect as much variety as ever, only not quite as weird and wild as Outland.

Dalaran (Capital)
Dalaran will be the capital city of Northrend. It will hover above the continent and you will be able to access it without even a flying mount. (You won’t have it for your first levels in Northrend)
Basically the Blue Dragonflight has taken a turn for the worse and the Kirin Tor are concerned about it. What’s about to ensue is a battle over magic and once Dalaran is rebuilt, it will be the staging grounds for that battle.
Dalaran on WoWWiki.com

Dragonblight
Graveyard of Dragons from the Blue Dragonflight.
Dragonblight on WoWWiki.com
Dragonblight Video on Youtube

Howling Fjord
This is one of the two entry points of Northrend, and is the zone where the forces of Arthas originally landed on the continent. In this region you will find the outpost of Valgarde, the Forsaken settlement of New Agamand, and a few other towns.
Howling Fjord on Official Site
Howling Fjord on WoWWiki.com
Howling Fjord video on Youtube

Utgarde Keep
This is the first dungeon appearing in WotLK. It’s inhabited by Vrykuls (viking-like race) and should feature 4 wings once complete.
Utgarde Keep preview on WoWinsider.com
Utgarde Keep on WoWWiki.com

Borean Tundra
This is the second entry point of Northrend for players. This is where the horde has established the settlement of Warsong Hold under the command of Garrosh Hellscream (currently in Nagrand). You will also meet friendly Tuskarrs here.
Borean Tundra on WoWWiki.com
Borean Tundra video on Youtube

Grizzly Hills
Zone of the … Furbolgs !
Grizzly Hills
Grizzly Hills video on Youtube

Other regions
There are still 6 unknown regions, but we can assume that they are Azjol-Nerub, Crystalsong Forest, Icecrown Glacier, Sholazar Basin, Storm Peaks, and Zul’drak

New races
No new races for players, but there are a few new NPC races. The most active one in Northrend will probably be the Nerubians, Tuskarrs, Vrykul, and of course the Blue Dragonflight

PvP
Lake Wintergrasp

• Lake Wintergrasp will be an outdoor non-instanced PvP zone in the middle of Northrend. The main focus will be interesting reward affecting the whole region (or continent) and of course it will features … Siege weapons and descrutible buildings !
• The region is entirely avoidable and siege weapons won’t be useable outside the designated area.

Siege Weapons and destructible buildings

• Siege Weapons will be available in Lake Wintergrasp, and they’re considering including them in old battlegrounds too. The current plan is to have mobile siege weapons so they can be positioned and aimed. For the moment we’ve heard about very “warcrafty” siege weapons, Meat Wagons, Ballistas, Catapults, Steam tanks etc …

New battleground

• A new battleground is also under development, it will have siege vehicles, 15 people in each team, and games will last 30~40 minutes.

Arena Changes

• Arena weapons will probably have a rating requirement in the future, for example you’ll need 1500 points to buy a weapon, but won’t be able to buy it if your rating is below 1750 (this is an example, there isn’t any value for the moment)
• They might add a “Skirmish mode” to let you chose which team you want to face in Arena.
• Arena Season 3 is scheduled, with a new arena and new gear.
• Season 1 gear will be available through honor system when the season 3 starts.

Battleground changes

• In AV, players won’t spawn in the cave until there’s nowhere else to spawn. Players will have the ability to report other players for being AFK, like the spam reports. You can remove this debuff by going in combat. If you don’t, you won’t gain any honor.
• Honor gain will be more important at the end of a BG to make people stay.
• Guild battlegrounds might be added (let guilds challenge each other, join battlegroup as a guild, etc). The ability to join AV as a group will probably be reactivated.
• More items will be added to battleground’s marks rewards.
• They’re also thinking about letting people chose the size of a battleground (15vs15, 20vs20, etc)

Dungeons

• Wrath of the Lich King will have new 10 man and 25 man raids.
• Arthas will be the final boss of one of the dungeon (but probably won’t be available at the beginning because he’s supposed to be the final boss of the expansion, expect a patch like Illidan)

Zul’aman
Nothing really new about the instance itself, except a few screenshots, but we had a nice preview of three loots here : Dagger of Bad Mojo

, Jin’rohk, The Great Apocalypse

, Formula: Enchant Weapon - Executioner

.

New 25 man raid dungeon
A 25 man dungeon is scheduled for release after Zul’aman (and before the expansion). Loots will be better than tier 6 and it will have 6 bosses.

Caverns of Time
A new CoT instance will be added in WotLK.

Stats

• Spirit will be improved in WotLK.
• “Free” spell damage will be given to healers.

Classes
Druids

• Mana issues are being looked at. (Moonkins)
• Cat form’s range will be tuned

Mages

• Water Fountain and Muffin Factory (like the soulwell) are incoming. (No more “WATER PLZ !!!”)

Hunters

• A legendary ranged weapon will be available soon. (New 25 Man raid ?)
• Mana issues are being looked at.
• Many changes for hunters will be implemented in 2.3, more utilities for arena battles and group utility are planned.
• Hunter’s arena weapons prices might be lowered to reflect the fact that they need to buy two weapons (or even three).

Shamans

• It seems that shaman talents were changed in the game version available during the Blizzcon, you can check them here
• Crowd Control spells might be available in levels 71 to 80.
• Totems are being looked at, The Mana Spring totem will be a lot stronger than it is and some other will be made stronger too.

Priests

• Fear Ward will be spread around.
• Lightwell and other abilities are being looked at.

Paladins

• Stat distribution will be changed for retribution paladins, spell damage won’t be as much needed as before.
• The Season 3 Paladin Retribution set will have resilience.

Rogues

• Rogue mobility in arena could be changed.

Warriors

• They might up the damage a bit while tanking to make the class more fun.

Professions

• Daily quests are coming in 2.2 and 2.3 (Cooking !)
• More best-in-slot equipment will be added. (Give each profession a very good BoP item)
• They want to make the leveling of crafts easier, especially from 275 to 300 (because it’s not the “top” anymore)
• Crafters should have the possibility to create great leveling gear (including 70 to 80 leveling equipment in Northrend to reward people who actually takes time to level their craft while they xp)
• Itemizations gaps will be filled with crafting.
• Vendor recipes will be more random and less campable

Engineering

• Engineering is gonna get some love … And more precisely, engineers will be able to craft a flying machine.

Alchemy

• Transmutation will be changed, a daily cooldown will replace the current 24h cooldown. (Like instance resets)
• Discoveries will be changed to make some of them easier to get. In the first place they were supposed to be “bonus”, not something that you really need which is uber-hard to find. (For example, deviate delight would have been good as a discovery)

Jewelcrafting

• A few epic gems were shown and presented as Zul’aman drops, you probably already saw them because they were all parts of the gems available in 2.2 PTR Patch.

Inscription
See first part of the news.

Cooking

• A lot of new recipes will be available in Zul’aman, including melee hit food, spell crit food, a food that deals AOE damage to enemies near you, and a few other things.

Items/quest (anything I couldn’t add in other categories)

• Green items in Northrend will be better than current Tier 4 equipment.
• Next patch (2.2 ? 2.3 ?) will add a dungeon daily quest, a battleground daily quest, and a cooking daily quest.
• A lot of heroic badges loots will be added to the game with Zul’aman

Useful links
This section will be easy, WoWinsider.com did a fantastic job during the Blizzcon.

• WotLK Official Website
• Expansion Demo Panel
• Opening Ceremony
• Dungeons & Raids Panel
• Professions and Item Panel
• PvP Panel
• Class Panel
• Class Panel Days 2 (Q&A)

Here are some of the details I have scrounged up from across the net dealing with the Death Knight class and how it will work.

The Death Knight will be a plate wearing DPS/Tank hybrid. Once you have hit level 80 with your main character, you will have the option of undertaking an epic quest to ‘unlock’ your Death Knight character. Supposedly any race can be a Death Knight and you will start out as a higher level character, probably in your 60 - 70. The Death Knight is considered to be an alternate, advanced class to be used in end game play only.

The mechanic for Death Knights is totally new. They do not use Rage, or Mana, or Energy. A Death Knight will have a Rune Sword which will have 6 ‘etched’ runes. These runes can be either Frost, Blood or Unholy. Different abilities require different mixes of runes and when you use abilities, those runes will be used. Runes will refresh over time akin to cooldown timers. Runes can also be swapped while out of combat.

It appears some types of abilities will be pet style, such as the ability to summon multiple zombies to fight for you.

The Death Knight sounds very exciting for sure!