I like Death Knights. Sure, mechanically they sometimes don't totally vibe for me - I really like the Legion-onward design for Unholy, but I've always preferred the aesthetics of Frost, except for the forced dual-wielding that we've had since also Legion (and I really dislike Breath of Sindragosa). And while I never feel quite as comfortable tanking as Blood as I do with a Protection Paladin, I really like that spec as well.
It's pretty crazy to think that DKs are now 12 years old, having been first released in Wrath of the Lich King, which came out in November of 2008 (this happened just two months after I moved to Los Angeles, staying in my sister's apartment while my best friend and I looked for our own place. Despite the whole financial crisis - which of course looks like nothing compared to what we're dealing with now, it's an era I feel nostalgic for.) But I remember there were players who objected to the class in large part because of quests in the starting experience.
The DK starting experience was unlike anything they'd done in-game before. With the first hero class (to be fair, first of two so far) giving you a giant head start leveling, we got a unique quest chain that began with us as full-fledged members of the Scourge, on a mission to spread the Lich King's death and destruction.
While our primary antagonists in that chain (up until the end of it) were the fanatical Scarlet Crusade, and thus sort of "morally acceptable victims" the fight was only mostly against the Crusade's fighting forces - in one quest, you kill fleeing civilians. Notably, while players were level 55 (or possibly 56 by this point in the chain,) the civilians tended to be level 15, 20, or maybe 30 at most, and none fought back against you. So you were totally slaughtering people who, while potentially not innocent, were nonetheless certainly not a threat to you (and frankly, as horrible as the Crusade was, the people who joined it might have been doing so just to survive an apocalyptic threat.)
WoW is not without its morally grey content. The entire quest chain about trying to bully the centaurs in Thousand Needles into letting your faction pump oil there is all kinds of messed up, and generally when the faction conflict comes into play, things get uglier (while I think the Horde is far, far more likely to engage in villainous skullduggery, there were moments in the BFA War Campaign on the Alliance side that gave me pause - particularly using Magister Umbric's Void Portals to send Horde emissaries in Zuldazar... somewhere else.)
Class-specific content is a great opportunity to play with morality. In the Warlock green fire quest chain, there's a moment after beating the mid-way boss in the Black Temple scenario where Akama asks you to aid him in dealing with some of the chaotic demons that have been unleashed in the basement of the temple. However, rather than actually doing that, your Imp summons themselves and then suggests you instead go upstairs and loot the place. It was a fantastic moment that really felt true to the opportunistic and self-centered warlock you're playing.
DKs found themselves attacking Light's Hope Chapel once again in Legion, as well as potentially devastating the Red Dragonflight.
So what's interesting here is that the new Death Knights are profoundly different.
If you start a DK that is a member of an allied race or a Pandaren (I think the old experience is preserved for older races... maybe) you just start at level 58 (presumably 10 once 9.0 hits) and have a brief intro cutscene at Icecrown Citadel before Bolvar sends you out to be a hero.
It really creates a very different vibe. Essentially, if you're a Vulpera Death Knight, you may never have done anything particularly immoral or atrocious. You might not really have anything to atone for - your status as a Death Knight is simply that you have certain admittedly creepy powers.
Given that Shadowlands seems like it will be expanding the conception of death and death magic, Death Knights are in a place to have a very different sort of moral tone to them.
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