As I've documented on this blog many a time, I have a deep love for the "dark is not evil" trope, where you have heroic people who nevertheless give off scary, sinister, macabre vibes. And WoW's Death Knights are... well, it's complicated.
At least prior to Shadowlands, when post-Cataclysm races weren't able to be Death Knights, all members of the class went through the "Death Knight Starting Experience," starting you at level 55 (you needed to have a character of at least level 55 to make one, but it's still a fully separate character - I just happened to delete my Draenei Shaman to make room on my server for my Death Knight, and re-created his appearance and name, flavoring it as the Shaman being raised as a Death Knight). Anyway, the DKSE, as I don't think anyone has abbreviated it, had you fighting for the Scourge (the iconic undead villain faction, led by the Lich King) against the Scarlet Crusade (who are basically the evil fundamentalist zealots, though they do have civilians among them). Most of your quest-givers here are actually bosses from the Naxxramas raid (which originally released as the final raid of Vanilla WoW, but was revamped for level 80 when Wrath of the Lich King came out to serve as the expansion's starter raid).
The quests here actually have you do some real nasty things, including killing fleeing civilians (while you were high-level, some of the people fleeing you were like, level 15). It's only after you defeat the Crusaders and turn your attention to the Argent Dawn (the good-guy faction focused on combating the Scourge) that events play out that both break your Death Knight's loyalty to the Lich King (upon finding you you've been sent basically as cannon fodder for the paladins of the Argent Dawn to kill and hopefully draw out Tirion Fordring, who was basically the greatest living paladin) but also, it's implied at least, that the holy power of the location severs the mental control the Lich King has over you. You then go to your faction's capital with a letter of introduction from Tirion that basically says "hey, I know this is a Death Knight, but they've broken free of the Scourge and could reintegrate into society). From then on, you're basically just another adventurer, and can be a real hero, even if your methods are... dark (well, I don't know, Frost Death Knights aren't too bad, except for the occasional undead dragon they summon to breath frost in a big line).
When Shadowlands came out, they opened up the class to all playable races, but given that many of these joined the game after the events of that starting experience, they instead had these Death Knight begin as lieutenants of Bolvar Fordragon, who heroically took on the role of Lich King after we defeated Arthas and, with some notable exceptions, mostly used his power to restrain the Scourge and protect the world. So, these Death Knights were basically heroes from the start, albeit using, you know, dark methods.
All that preamble aside:
Death Knights, of course, as precedented in D&D, had a lot of shared flavor with Paladins. Indeed, back in the original talent system, Retribution Paladins had a set of talents called Conviction, which increased their critical strike chance, while Blood Death Knights had Dark Conviction, which did the same. And, of course, in Warcraft III, it was the former paladin Arthas Menethil who served as the primary death knight character, with mirrored abilities.
Thus, it makes plenty of sense that D&D's approach to the Death Knight would be to make it a Paladin subclass. There's even some precedence, with the Oathbreaker Paladin functioning as a sort of proto-Death Knight.
But given that they've explicitly said this is a brand-new subclass, we have to wonder what it will look like as expressed as a 5E subclass, using the existing chassis of the Paladin.
That said, in an interview with James Wyatt, he mentioned that, true to the "hero class" origins of the Death Knight and Demon Hunter (an ironic term given that they're more like "anti-hero classes," though this was mainly that they started at higher level, which was also true for the Evoker,) you're expected to start these characters at level 3, as the subclass sort of needs to be there from the start for the character to make sense. He mentioned that the subclasses will go back to level 1 and 2 features for the classes and alter some features.
I suspect that one such thing might be that Divine Smite might be altered, giving us something like "Rune Strike" or maybe "Rune Smite" (to keep it in line with such spell names. Death Knights doing radiant damage feels weird, so we might get a version that does necrotic damage.
I also wonder if these two subclasses in particular will have a larger set of subclass spells - while I think you could reflavor something like Bone Shield to just be Armor of Agathys, there are so many iconic abilities that it might be weird to give to all Paladins.
Another challenge is going to be to allow for all three specs of Death Knight to find representation in a single subclass. In WoW, Death Knights have Blood, Frost, and Unholy as their three specs. Blood is the tanking spec, which is all about healing yourself by striking your foes (primarily through an ability called Death Strike) and maintaining a protective Bone Shield. Frost is all about lining up massive strikes, hitting like a truck with an attack called Obliterate, and radiating frost damage or sending waves of frost (and as a big cooldown ability, they can send a Frostwyrm - think Dracolich - to breathe on all foes in front of them). Unholy is WoW's closest equivalent to a Necromancer, having a permanent ghoul pet and summoning additional temporary ghouls and skeletal mages frequently over the course of combat.
I suspect we'll probably be able to distinguish the specs mainly via spell choice (and possibly using dual-wielding to go Frost - a spec that allows dual-wielding or using a two-handed weapon, while the other two are exclusively designed around using a single big weapon).
While Unholy gets a permanent ghoul pet, the other two specs can still summon a temporary one, and this ghoul actually lasts a minute, with a two-minute cooldown on the ability that summons it, so it can be up around 50% of the time.
Thus, I'm sort of inclined to imagine that we might get something like the UA Oathbreaker, which can use Channel Divinity to summon a skeleton or zombie as a pet. The one thing I'd really hope they do is make the summoned undead minion scale with our level. A zombie's +3 to hit is going to be pretty useless if you're in Icecrown Citadel at level 19 fighting Sindragosa (the mother, kind of literally, of all Frostwyrms, late consort to the Blue Dragon Aspect, Malygos).
Usually Paladins don't get much beyond a Channel Divinity option and Oath spells at level 3, though as we mentioned earlier, we might get more extensive changes with this.
For a level 7 feature, we often get some kind of additional benefit to our Aura of Protection. This isn't universal, but many paladin subclasses do this. Again, if they want to lean into the "necromancer"/Unholy vibes of this subclass, we could potentially get something like the Oathbreaker's Aura of Hate, which buffs the damage of undead creatures in the aura (which did get fixed to only buff friendly creatures in the UA). We'd probably leave fiends out of it, given that Death/Necromancy is fairly distinct from Demonic/Fel magic in WoW (the lore on the Scourge is a bit complex and somewhat subject to retcons - while initially it was presented as being created by the demonic Burning Legion, in Shadowlands we learned that the power behind it was totally separate, and even in Warcraft III, the Lich King very quickly started plotting against the Legion).
We don't actually get a third paladin subclass feature until level 15. Usually this is some sort of defensive or group-support feature. Again, while they were pretty explicit about the Ebon Blade being a wholly original option here, I'm tempted to say we call this Icebound Fortitude (the main all-specs defensive cooldown ability) and just let them get the Oathbreaker's resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage. (Actually, in WoW, this ability both reduces incoming damage and also gives you immunity to being stunned. Maybe the latter could be part of this? The flavor is that you freeze your own blood).
Finally, all Paladin subclasses have their level 20 "ult." The only class with a subclass feature as its capstone, these basically have to be flashy. While it's now an Unholy-only ability, the real show-stopper Death Knights have had since 2008 (it's even featured in the Wrath of the Lich King announcement trailer) is Army of the Dead, where you summon like a dozen ghouls to attack your foes.
Here's how I'd handle it in D&D: make the Army work more like the "Conjure" spells in 5.5, filling your Aura of Protection emanation (which is now 30 feet) with undead creatures and have them do damage and other effects to anyone that's inside of the aura. While the WoW ability is just damage, I think for D&D it might also be difficult terrain, maybe even potentially restrain foes inside of it, and maybe you get cover from them.
Now, last thing to cover: spells.
I don't know if we're going to get a massive number of Death Knight abilities as spells, but I think the following might be iconic enough to make them in. They might also be presented as Wizard/Warlock spells that we get as Oath spells.
Death and Decay: This is a spell where you place an area of nasty shadow damage that ticks on any foes standing inside of it for a few seconds. In D&D, this could be maybe a cylinder spell that lasts for a minute and does damage to creatures starting in it. Indeed, in WoW, you can often take talents to make foes inside of it slowed, which could be covered by just making it Difficult Terrain inside.
Death Coil: A bolt of shadow energy that damages foes but also heals friendly undead. It's a bit like Negative Energy Flood, to be fair, but maybe it'd be balanced a little differently.
Lichborne: A sort of odd defensive cooldown, this actually turns your creature type to Undead for a short duration and also makes you immune to things like fear. (Notably, it lets you cast Death Coil on yourself to heal). I think this could be a fun bit of utility.
Death Strike: I'm curious to see how the book handles the various "strike" abilities that characters in WoW have. Death Strike is used by all three specs, though for Unholy and Frost, it's more of a situational thing to help recover while soloing (you get to use it for free after you kill a foe of reasonable level,) while Blood uses it constantly.
Rune Strike: This one's a bit odd, because it's not in the game anymore, but it was called out explicitly in the announcement. In WoW, Death Knights have a kind of two-part resource system. They have six runes that take 10 seconds each to recharge (though this is reduced if you get more of the Haste stat on your gear) and every Rune you spend on abilities generates 10 Runic Power, which you typically spend on a smaller number of abilities, like Death Coil or Death Strike. In earlier expansions, Death Strike cost two runes (originally, it was more complicated, because you specifically had two runes each of Blood, Frost, and Unholy, and different abilities used different specific runes) and so Blood Death Knights would spend their Runic Power on Rune Strike, which was mostly just a physical damage attack (I think it couldn't be dodged or parried). So, yeah, no real idea of how this will work, but we know it will be in there.
Death Grip: A really iconic ability, Death Grip lets Death Knights grab a target from afar and pull them to them, which is pretty nice for a melee-only class. Notably, before Wrath of the Lich King, I don't think any classes had any spells or abilities that could forcibly move enemy targets, so this felt incredible (and naturally got a lot of people to macro the ability to also have their character yell "Get Over Here!" like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat). I could see this being maybe a 2nd level spell (though if it can only pull them toward you, maybe it should be 1st level, as Vortex Warp is 2nd level). Make it a bonus action, too, please (and that might justify making it 2nd level).
Anyway, I'm really very excited to see how they handle the Death Knight and Demon Hunter in the WoW book. If I can get my best friend and fellow long-term WoW player to run an Azeroth-based adventure, I'd probably be more eager to play my Death Knight than my main Paladin, given that the Paladin is sort of not that different from someone I could have always played in D&D. My Death Knight has, since 2008, been kind of my "Vice Main," and actually hit 80 before the paladin back in the day because it was so fun to play Blood DPS (an option that vanished in the next expansion, though these days soloing as a tank spec is much less painful than it used to be). Also, I think that the very dark backstory I've got for him would contrast very much with my current very naive and innocent young Wizard I'm playing. (A 22-year-old Triton versus a 30,000-year-old undead Draenei. Hm, it'd also continue my ongoing tendency to always play blue people.)
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