Looking ahead

As I'm sure most of you are, I'm pretty excited about the new expansion coming out, Wrath of the Lich King. There are a lot of details already on what to expect, Northrend seems to be sort of a Scandinavian-esque place, complete with viking-like people, and going back to a more earth-like landscape. While the last expansion had some cool new places to go, I'm glad we will once again be able to explore new areas that aren't so alien looking. This expansion also looks to explain some history in the Warcraft universe, such as the origins of the Dwarves, as well as the Nerubians, and I'm sure a lot of the quest lines will link back to other questions that were unanswered previously.

All of that aside, the number one reason I'm excited for the expansion is the new Death Knight class. Now I know there is no official word on how to go about unlocking this class, but at the moment it sounds like they have changed their original position of making a level 80 quest chain to unlock the class and gone with just having a character at a certain high level will open up the Death Knight to be made. Now I know this may seem to take away from the challenge of gaining access to the new hero class, but you have to understand that many people just don't have the time to get through to level 80 and then go through a quest chain just so they can unlock a new class that sets them back another 20 or so levels. I do think they need to have some sort of quest chain though, maybe something like the paladin and warlock epic mount quests that sends you to the old world dungeons (StratDK comes to mind) and gives some kind of background to how these Death Knights come to be.

Another thing I think people are worried about is if the Death Knight is so easy to unlock, there will be a huge amount of players starting one up as soon as the expansion comes out. Now I'm not saying this is wrong, but maybe it won't be as bad as we think. Those of us without the need to have multiple alts tend to focus on their main toon, and while I'm sure a lot of people will be interested to see what a new class can do, many others will be more drawn to the new continent of Northrend and what it has to offer, not to mention reaching the new level cap. This is also where a quest chain to unlock the class comes in, it would regulate the flow of people that are able to create a Death Knight, but if they were to make it a level 60 quest to go to the old world dungeons, then it's attainable by casual players, but will still take some effort on their part.

What I'm sure we're all still wondering is what kind of starting zone will we get for a Death Knight? Obviously they can't start in any of the normal starting zones, but it seems like they should have some kind of 'get to know your class' area before you set out into the world. Maybe something along the lines of being an instrument of the Scourge to breaking free and becoming a member of your respective faction. Actually I think it would be pretty cool to start out as a bad guy, hostile to both Horde and Alliance and forced to attack them at first, then somehow turning on your masters and defecting. I think it would make for a unique experience.

What do you think about these ideas? What ideas do you have? What are you looking forward to the most in the new expansion?