With Death Knights getting their own starting zone and their own heroic storyline, it was often wondered whether they'd share the same opening cinematic as their individual races. We have the answer now: They do get their own unique cinematic, shown above.
There's two major things I took away from the cinematic. First, it gives a solid origin story for Death Knights: You were apparently slain in combat with the Scourge, but raised to become a Death Knight. So the ideal of the PC Death Knight seems to be a hero who was made an unwilling victim, which makes the fact that he or she is welcomed back by the Horde or Alliance possibly much more believable. As you awaken as a fresh level 55, you are also apparently still under the thrall of the Lich King, which should make for an epic newbie zone experience as you struggle to regain your freedom.
Secondly, the opening cinematic has a wonderfully ominous picture of Acherus, the Ebon Hold, home of the Death Knights, looming above Light's Hope Chapel -- a perfect setup for the coming war with the Scourge, that drives home how immediate the threat is.
Oh, and do be cautious, this cinematic has a high chance of getting you way too fired up to play a Death Knight.
No more spawning at Tirion Fordring for new Death Knights, it looks like the Death Knight Citadel of Acherus, The Ebon Hold, is now implemented on the Beta servers, reports beta tester Jayde. The Ebon Hold, which is located on the eastern edge of the Eastern Plaguelands, will be where all new Death Knights start.
What's more interesting is that some of the first new quest text seems to imply that new Death Knights are still under the control of the Lich King, as the quest "The Eye of Acherus" sends you to a beacon on top of the hold to report to the Lich King himself. So apparently, you will in fact have to quest to break free of the Lich King -- but you start the quests on the Death Knight. Of course, we'll know as soon as we can get more information from the servers.
Another mechanic of the Death Knight that seems to have popped up for the first time is the concept of Runeforged Weapons. However, this is not the switching of Blood, Unholy, and Frost runes that has been previously discussed-- rather, it appears that the forging instead applies buffs to your weapons. The two examples shown by Jayde's screenshots are as follows:
Rune of the Fallen Crusader: Affixes your Rune Weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase Strength by 30% for 15 seconds. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
Rune of Lichbane: Affixes your Rune Weapon with a rune that has a chance to strike the undead for extra fire damage and stun them for 5 seconds. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
Answering a question about water mounts, Jennie said that they don't seem to be in the works. Still, you can get your H2O kicks with the non-player-controllable boats in Lake Wintergrasp. Another questioner asked whether the flying combat mounts will take damage. Some of these combat mounts will have shielding to protect the player from damage, but the mount will take damage instead.
Killing Arthas
Consensus in the chat was that there is a lot of excitement around the idea of being able to kill Arthas, the Lich King, even if it takes up the same progression as Kil'Jaeden currently does in TBC. The hope is that Frostmourne will drop, but the consequences of getting the sword are not yet known. Will it corrupt the player and take away stats? Will players become the new Lich King if they pick it up? We'll have to wait and see.
That's just one of the questions awaiting an answer for us in the post-Wrath world. Another came from a chat question about whether there would be any future for the Warcraft franchise after Arthas is dead. From what our bloggers have heard, there's no standing still for the franchise. Turpster says, "I think a favourite King of mine might be making a return to a Stormy City!"
Understandably, everyone is begging to know more about the Death Knight class. At WWI, the Blizzard developers discussed the class in depth at both the main Development panel as well as at the Q&A panel. So you don't have to go fishing everywhere to find what you want to know, here's a roundup of new information about Death Knights from WWI so far.
Starting Area
The Death Knight starting area will be an extended area in Northern Plaguelands. The developers feel strongly about keeping people interested in playing in the Old World so they are creating this new zone. I personally hate every zone that has the word "plague" associated with it. Admittedly, I didn't reach either of the current Plaguelands until after I'd upgraded to The Burning Crusade, which meant I really had no time for grinding there since Outland awaited alluringly. However, it will be interesting to see if they make changes to the existing Western and Eastern Plaguelands along with adding content to the North to make these areas more interesting to players -- be they Death Knights or not.
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment! Travis asks...
What can you tell me about the other portals around Outlands (the only one that springs to mind right now is the one in Zangarmarsh)? They look just like the one you get to Outlands through, but are just standing there doing nothing.
Answer: Those portals were once used by the Burning Legion and their lackies to travel between Outland and various other worlds. Those portals were also used to send Legion reinforcements to Outland. Before Illidan and his posse usurped Magtheridon, they went around shutting down these portals to prevent Magtheridon from being reinforced. Further, they've been kept closed so Kil'jaeden can't come stomping back into Outland to punish Illidan for not being able to kill the Lich King.
In the last expansion, all we did was walk through a portal and find a new world -- the old one was left pretty much unchanged overall. But in this coming expansion, Blizzard has made it pretty clear that almost nothing is off limits -- Northrend is getting added to Azeroth, and we're not traveling across space to get there. And considering that Arthas' story echoes throughout almost all of the old world (and that the whole thing is named after him), things are definitely going to change once Northrend appears on the world map.
So we've put together a gallery of just what will be different about the old world after the Wrath of the Lich King comes upon us. To be fair, some are set in stone (we know for sure that Naxxaramas is exiting stage left for a bigger part later), and some are little more than speculation (Uther played a huge part in Arthas' life, so his tomb seems like a good stage for an event at some point), but odds are that by the time we've all reached level 80, all of these places in Old Azeroth will look very different.
When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.
Last week, we took a look at how roleplaying a death knight will be different from roleplaying other classes, because death knights come pre-packaged with elements of a backstory for you to flesh out: they have, for whatever reason, at one time joined forces with the Lich King, learned from him how to be a death knight, and now are breaking free of his influence and striking out against him.
As Medeni pointed out in her comments, however, this can potentially lead to a kind of unlikable "celebrity in rehab" type of personality. Imagine, if you will, the death knight known as Marisoo: formerly a paladin of the Light, she sought to destroy the Scourge that plagued her homeland of Lordaeron, but eventually, as she was consumed with vengeance and hatred, she joined the Lich King instead of destroying him. Having learned to turn corpses into slavering ghouls and call forth armies of the undead, she eventually thought better of the whole "wickedly destroy all life" thing and decided to destroy the Lich King after all, only this time she would use his own power against him! Muahaha.
As you can see, there are some pretty obvious flaws in this idea. First of all, the first half of it is almost a direct copy of Arthas' own tale, and, while I can certainly appreciate the power of that story, and the possibility that other paladins could have gone through something similar, roleplayers who want to play a death knight character must realize that it's going to get old fast. Just as death knights aren't just human paladins, we can't all go around copying Arthas, brooding on how moody and wicked we've become. We have to come up with new ideas that fit the death knight mould.
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, WoW Insider's newest weekly feature column. Have a question about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe? Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment! Let's leap right into things, and see what Tyler wants to know, shall we?
Question: If the Ashbringer is really the Light's answer to Frostmourne, then why isn't anyone trying to use it, or destroy it? Is it because that Tirion Fordring has it? If he does, in WotLK then, he needs our help to weaken the Lich King and let him use it?
Answer: Nobody is using the Ashbringer right now because nobody has the Ashbringer in its true, Light-blessed form. Last we knew, the Ashbringer was still in Highlord Mograine's hands in a Corrupted form. The latest Know Your Lore covers the events leading up to that in a little more detail. Currently, we either need to purify The Ashbringer or forge a new one to be able to use it against the Lich King.
When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the world's a stage, even if just an electronic one.
We don't know a whole lot about death knights in WoW yet, but what we do know is already enough to show that death knights are the class with the most background story already laid out for them ahead of time: The death knights we will be able to play are former servants of the Lich King who have now turned against him and joined the Alliance or the Horde instead. This background story is built into the class -- something each and every death knight roleplayer will have to take into account when they roleplay their character, and it will have ramifications upon everyone else in the entire global society of Azeroth as well.
Some other classes have a great depth of lore behind them as well, such as druids, paladins and shamans, who look to Malfurion, Uther, and Thrall for inspiration. These classes certainly look up to their heroes and follow in their footsteps, just as, in some ways, death knights follow in the footsteps of Arthas. And yet for other classes that has little effect on each individual's path to becoming a practitioner of his or her particular abilities. The transition from normal shmoe to level one hero is left vague for the player upon character creation, unless, as a roleplayer working on a backstory, he gives it special attention.
Indeed, some classes are pretty straightforward, and don't necessarily suggest a story at all. Instead, they present us with an image, or an idea -- when you play one of the existing nine classes, you can fit right into the role without a story, because the role feels like a basic archetype you already understand.
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, WoW Insider's newest weekly feature column. Have a question about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe? Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!
We have no reason to delay, so let's get right into the meat of things!
Jere asks: I might be wrong on location, but why is there a member of the Argent Dawn stationed in Dun Morogh just southeast of IF?
Answer: Unfortunately, we have no idea. Father Gavin might just be an emissary or representative from the Argent Dawn to Dun Morogh, but he has no quests or dialogue attached to him. It's possible he'll be used for something in the future, but it seems unlikely. He simply exists. Nothing more.
Unfortunately for some players, very likely not. While Kil'jaeden was definitely one of the driving forces of the Legion (and I'm sure we'll see more in the lore cutscene that apparently takes places at the end of his fight, whenever SK posts the video of it), he's nothing compared to Sargeras himself, and we'll definitely need more than a raid to topple the World of Warcraft's biggest big bad. Throw in the fact that there are still demons running rampant all over Outland (not to mention portals from all kinds of various places bringing them in), and even though we've just spent a whole expansion trying to kill the Burning Legion, odds are that we'll see them again soon.
But not too soon -- hopefully, as Morbosa says, the next expansion will offer a return to the old swords, sorcery and politics that high fantasy lovers love so much. It's not that we don't enjoy fighting demons -- they're fun. But nothing feels as good sometimes as a mace cracking some skeleton heads towards the goal of beating a king of the undead, and hopefully that's what we'll find in Northrend.
With solid confirmation that Naxx will be "floating" off to Northrend (and not exist in two places at once) also comes a strong hint by Bornakk that they will be removing the ability to get Tier-3 armor pieces along with the rest of the current Naxx loot. Bornakk says that "For players who want the look and the stats of tier 3 armor at level 80, hopefully they are already farming the dungeon for them." This is a very strong indication that post WotLK, the current Tier 3 gear will be no longer available.
Before today it has been pure speculation that this removal of loot would or would not happen. The only time that the WoW Insider staff can think of this happening before (save for the holiday and special events) is with a few old mount models getting changed. And that is nothing compared to entire loot tables being removed from the game. Note that the changes in patch 2.3 to old world loot were just that – changes, not removal.
In many ways this removal does make since, given that the armor models will be reused in Wrath of the Lich King's version of Naxx. While there is similar looking and colored gear floating around WoW, none of it is really twenty levels apart and powerful each in their own right.
However with that said, the removal of items from the game like this stirs a mixed reaction in me.
Blizzplanet has a list of all the bidders (for public humiliation purposes?) -- the "winner's" (if you can call someone out $20k a winner) name was Xeophonix, apparently from Italy. Only the first two bidders went all out -- there's one more $20k bid, and then it drops to $12k, $5k, and then on down from there to the much more reasonable bids around $500. But grats to Xeophonix -- hope the $20,000 sword is worth it. And watch your back -- we don't know exactly how you kill a Lich King, but if Weaponmasters didn't quite get Arthas' sword away from him for good, you might have an angry Menethil/Ner'zhul showing up at your door.
A couple of days ago the European WoW site updated their Wrath of the Lich King page with a couple of new screenshots. If you're like me, any chance to devour new information about the expansion is welcome. You can see the first new shot at the top of this article and I've included the second below.
The first shot looks like a different angle of an area we've seen in previous pictures. There doesn't seem to be a lot we can glean from this photo, but you can see a Forsaken town in the far distance. If I had to guess from the terrain, I'd wager that we're looking at one of the starter zones, the Howling Fjord. What do you think? See anything I'm missing?
We've talked before about the question of what exactly will happen to Arthas, but it's looking pretty likely that we are going to be able to actually kill him in Wrath of the Lich King. This raises another interesting question however: Sincast asked over on the forums, "When Arthas is killed in-game does that mean that undead will be no more?..." Nethaera popped in right away to answer him... sorta:
Interesting concept to think about isn't it? But does killing Arthas really mean the undead cease to exist? They existed when he was just a paladin didn't they?
There are things to ponder here but most importantly...
Does the Lich King cease to be when the vessel is destroyed?
Although we have seen that Arthas and the Lich King are now "one," it remains to be seen what "one" really means for them. Are they two souls in one body? Is Arthas the flesh and the Lich King his armor? What kind of state would the Lich King exist in after Arthas was killed? What sort of threat would the Scourge pose at that point -- just fodder for new characters leveling up in future expansions perhaps?
Our very own 
Understandably, everyone is begging to 
So Kil'jaden is dead
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