WoW Devs Reveal How Death Knights Were Made

 Warcraft actually did that themselves and I'm obviously going to look at it, uh, I think tomorrow, like tomorrow you're going to be able to do death knights, yeah, yeah, here we go. Video is good watching it today I'm Tom Chilton and I'm Chris Earhat. We're here to talk to you about Death Knights, and all you know goes back to some of the community's earliest rumors talking about how there might be a character class and wrath of the lich king um and a lot of that came um from our decision with bernie crusade not to have a character class, right we wanted to make sure we didn't flood the game with classes that would then dilute everything down and so we had this strategic decision that we made with the first expansion to sort of set the table but there might not be a class in every expansion as we knew we had to give them out somehow yes but by the time we got to the raffle lich king we kind of knew that was the time for that yeah I mean death knights too, specifically you know I was kinda surprised because it was a weird thing with death knights because you know, there ss the horde had the first death knights and the reason why the dark portal The death knights on the sides of the portal are meant to symbolize the horde's dominance over death as if that's the whole reason they stand next to the dark portal so was me actually kinda surprised when death knights weren't like that because in warcraft 2 you had paladins for alliance and death knights for horde and they used something like mirrors with mirrored abilities for each other but that didn't happen and i guess then it became it's a bit different after Arthas became the Lich King but yeah, death knights used to be just a horde so iconic to the lore so iconic to everything in the north. Yes it seems like the night of death is going to happen no now or never yes right and there must be so much wrath I King was about Arthas and his story yes definitely it's just the centerpiece that it's about Arthas is filming to better tell his story, they are the perfect ones

Class at the perfect time yes and interestingly we remember we had this master class in the roon room right it was this potential tenth grade that had been tinkered with before wow ever came out yes and they have some of their ideas taken over rooms they went into the room blade went into their rooms on the floor like anti-magic zone anti-magic shell use some of these rune-like effects, um, so we drew from them, we drew from the Death knight units in Warcraft 3 like Death Coil and and their unholy, uh yeah, it's always been on horseback to me, maybe that's weird, but like Warcraft 2 they were a mounted unit and like Warcraft 3 the Death Knights were on a horse like i've always seen and also in warcraft 2 i think some of them also use staves to like cast death coils and [ __ ] i always thought it would be cool if you actually had a kla it's not too late maybe they could have that would be fun and we do that too ang romantics that was part of sacred cool, that's just a design value that we've always had. Well, you can see why death knights were so [ __ ] overwhelmed. We want it to be a runemaster, a necromancer and also a death knight, it's broken as [ __ ], what an absurd surprise as far as trying to make sure you know it doesn't properly water down classes so unique as possible, everything has to be as unique as possible and definitely feel where you need it, and we also need death knights that feel very different from the other heavy record magic classics, they might not feel like paladins though they're kind of an anti-palette and Arthas is a fallen paladin, they must have their own unique distinctive stuff, although yeah, they're just better than the women we made death knights. Really unique when we gave them their own custom starting area You were a member of the Horde Alliance and you were captured in battle and the Lich King literally turns you into a Death Knight monster against your will and then sends you out to explore this city to scourge, but eventually you'll flip and spin around the Lich King and help fight him and get your moment

Redemption Future Moment of Redemption Rejoin the Alliance The Horde as is appropriate, but at this moment we're sending you back to your capital city to make you like you're walking through Stormwind Nobody [ __ ] wants to throw names them old ones fruits on you you are a killer you are a monster you killed my family and you will get that i always thought that was a really cool idea i love this now obviously half of the emotes the npcs shoot at you and they do it at you uh, they were taken out of the game after the lawsuit, but there are still a few things left, at that point we wanted to go out and fight the Lich King and redeem ourselves. Yes it was a good idea as well as thinking about it like if you had a death knight character and you were only in the alliance or in the horde you thought it wouldn't and even if you start at level one it wouldn't either Make sense it wouldn't feel very lethal and so really creating that launch experience around what the death knight is and really kind of defining the story of their uh kind of integration into the alliance and horde became super important we had a few abilities, yeah i thought that was really cool because how you also started at 55 like no one ever complained about having to do the starting area because it also gave you your skills like you are slowly getting your skills when you walk through the starting zone it's like okay that's death grip that's uh you know horn of winter i think you had that back then and like a howling blast etc like it's really, was really badass, whenever it came out we knew we wanted an army of dead to start with. We had announced an Army of the Dead at a Blizzcon. They must have Death Coil because Death Knights had Death Coil, but Warlocks already have it, that's ok, they can have their own version of Death Coil, and there will be one from there Lots of Will What Else We Do To do this, we took things like Death and Decay from Boston's Mount Hyjal and looked at Gorfin to see if he had anything that Graphene unfortunately didn't have

anything that was too much we could borrow for him but we started doing gorfing, it didn't really do much, just the only thing that was hard about gorfin was this little thing that was like a person who Had to kill ghosts it looked like. In all the other places we could create ideas for other people and invent new things to add to it. Yes, I remember, although some of the defining moments for Death Knight were very early on, there were a few different things that we prototyped first. We created a mounted combat prototype that we actually tried to see how it would be so they would do my i so they would actually do it holy [ __ ] I didn't even know oh my god yeah what a good idea if the death knight would ride his death steed during the fight yes, but when we were prototyping it was really too difficult to overcome some of the challenges to make sure things were animated in a way that felt right and natural wi Given the size of things and the way as our characters are on mounts, it's easier to believe that a humanoid is suddenly turning on a dime, but the horse turning on a dime, you may want them to do some phy have sik and just feel right yeah and like that and ultimately those challenges really got us looking for yeah I don't really give [ __ ] as I think it would be cool if you could do it anyway me mean you could spin the horse now anyway right you just do it with the mouse you spin it around real quick so i just think that would be cool or whatever else would be really distinctive to the death knight but then we had to too thinking about what that means for the resource system for the right to death knights yes totally true it would also help them a lot to have their own resource system which ended up being really like death knights back then you have to remember that very few classes had two resources, i think death knights were the only ones because death knights back then had their runes and then they also had rune power while like most other kla eat like you just i think the only thing that comes close to you

That could maybe be like combo points and energy as a rogue, that's a unique system where it's almost like having six different resource bars that all move up in a different order and it was a bit more appealing in hindsight, honestly said, at Burn pre-crusade we had very little access to gameplay engineers to build new stuff for us, so we went for a while when we could actually ask for new stuff for the first time, one of the ideas we came up with for had the warrior with the chains instead of you having a chain that you would pull and smack someone towards you, so whenever everyone was making fun of me for my idea that warriors could have a chain that they would use on people like a death grip they were already thinking of it, yes, yes, that's what I mean so come on guys come on you could see where exactly I'm from but what if we gave this to the death knight g just instead of the world that would be a bad decision there was exactly the death group but that was definitely a bad move he then gave you the whole basis of how they would tank because desperate was a taunt back then it actually has the kind of and Changed the way our tanks worked because then we said well they have death grip at 35 yard range paladin has that range taunt they can yes bears and warriors needed paladins they had two ranged taunts they could do, they were [ __ ] completely overwhelmed, powered over [ __ ], actually gained range as we moved to that hole where you could now taunt something 30 yards away you couldn't do it right in Original game or Burning Crusade as it used to be, we had that foundation of death knight skills between things like death grip, we had some things like plague strike on holy Hit like there's a lot of hits yes there's a lot of strikes and you know when you look at how the death knights have evolved you know as the development progresses you even start getting into the playtests that we were about to have When we did a playtest, we inevitably wondered what death in playtest could be like. So why not death could be the tank? and still didn't have enough tanks in Burning Crusade. Let's make sure there are a lot of tanks. You probably want to know why no one tanked in BC and is Classic because it wasn't fun and it sucked and there was nothing you could do

Raid aside so it was bad that everyone started tanking with anger because tanks could actually do good damage and it was easier to respect the spec at that point since you had double specialization midway through anger than it would just be way better thats why i mean tanking a heroic and fiery crusade as a warrior i dont think its fun because i dont enjoy it i dont enjoy having aggro and having people aoe or everyone waiting to let me get aggro on everything its just not a fun game to play while when i play wrath of the lich king and i play a prop paladin or a warrior because warriors had crazy damage back then as prot warriors, they could if you had the right gear and all the different tank specs were really funny in the anger because they were actually capable of uncompetitive S cause damage, but they could do significant damage. There's still a dearth of times when it's more about personality than class, but at least make sure it's not about if I can do it, it's about, you know, if I want to do it, yeah , really kind of that works, and then also figuring out how they can get DPS right for people who want to be more of a deadly, definitely right, right parenting? Trying to match those in all three specs at once and making them feel different enough that the blood plays unholy and the frosting plays differently, so Frost was double that, right, yeah, and uh, unholy head, good , back then you had to remember you could play anything with anything you could do, frost, unholy or blood, two-handed or one-handed, like you could do whatever you [ __ ] wanted and like people had all kinds of different strategies as Frost is in general As it was in the beginning of Wrath is like Frost is really good at being an all round tank, like he's good at tanking aoe packs, good at defeating bosses tanking, unholy was really good at tanking aoe packs and blood was really good at tanking big hits like you were doing star therian three drake was a big deal back then, mostly because they had all the magical reju had uh-magic reduction that for the game was massive, and besides, you could play every spec as dps as many of you remember, whenever like, say, you

had a dk in your guild and the dk got shadowmourne rdk played played blood dps it was actually insane how versatile the dks were eggs and diseases and magic stuff and ridiculous brute force i just kill things thats right you know you take all these different things and you put them together and all of a sudden it's like waiting okay that's legit a hero class that makes a lot of sense i was supposed to be in charge of balance back then i was the balanced type death knights were really overwhelmed yeah like that you're kind of [ __ ] awake, huh, yeah you're just uh you're kinda [ __ ] awake and uh really kinda hit you just you know let things go wild huh yeah yeah there's that guy overpowering himself reports sorry but every time i wanted to be balanced guys death knights were really overwhelmed overwhelmed okay well yes yes yes yes they remember it well well they admit it he know e s everyone [ __ ] knows it's like sorry oops i [ __ ] sorry but every time i wanted to m on death nights i'd be a little weaker. I would have all these death loving people and I say no no no you can't nerf it they're fine they're fine they're fine in hindsight it's totally fine if you die arena you become a ghoul and then if you use ghoul blast and it kills you and kills your opponent you win the game in arena. Yeah yeah it's so cool I mean it's so funny you can't take that out of the game Do you want me if you don't have it can't how will it really be? At that time it wasn't really a dk is not obvious how you should play it, we want it to appear, yes, the players like the resources, my skills, use my talents, how can I combine them to create something great , we don't want to dictate everything to them and that would have taken it to make it perfectly balanced, so I'll say that th you absolutely nailed it, death knights are the most versatile class. I think death knights were the most versatile class we've ever had. You want you to do whatever you want okay you want to use a one handed weapon okay or you want

tank or dps you want dps okay what spec do you want to play okay okay play that okay yeah you're ok you're good that's okay that's it druids uh no no no shot like name kind of like off wall thingy the druid you might like, if you wanted to tank, you tanked in a very specific way, uh, I, I think death knights were infinitely more dynamic, we let them play with it, and then every patch of the expansion nerfed them a bit more and they have also been going strong for many many years and so true yes it was a great class and hopefully people can relive that yes well this is great I would love to do that thank you everyone who have taken this journey through the Furnace Blade with us, and we can't wait for you to join us in the classic Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch, where you can create a Death Knight to level and bere them all it makes going with northrend alongside your friends cool that's cool that's great ok uh yeah i mean i'm going to pr i don't know if i'm going to play a DK or not. I mean maybe I could level one to 70. It's just that if I leveled the DK to 70 I would have to play a DK all the way up to 70. As if I could buy a boost to 68 I could probably do it decently. I don't know if I could make it to seven that is I mean that's two sacred levels [ __ ] rested wrestling experience like I have to think about it I would be a lot I mean august 31st no no it will be tomorrow I mean this is what it will be uh probably work you did 10 years ago no i feel like a lot of games like remasters and re-releases. I mean Dark Souls 1 did a re-release. A lot of games release re-releases, and I don't think it's a bad thing. It can be a bad thing sometimes, but doing it in and of itself isn't that big of a deal, and uh yeah, I don't know that I might have a DK I think that's cool, but I can't imagine leveling two characters, it's going to take quite a while, but either way, I mean, I love these videos because I think they're awesome, because it it's like i tom chilton was the game director for about [ __ ] ever so it's kinda cool to see you know all the old stuff

Boys get together and um you don't know old as in like they have gray hair but old as in like you know it's from then and um but I mean honestly I feel like you would get you hooked on classic wow there's probably at least a 50% chance you have gray hair you know i'm just being honest that's just a fact and it is what it is yes no hair yes gray hair or no hair but it was a good time man and so there's a lot of people you know it's like I remember that happened to me so me and my friend Eric obviously like we're 32 now and like um back when we were growing up playing super nintendo and remember when they re-released super nintendo with so many games on it and stuff like not all games but a lot of games on how Nintendo did well anyway, Eric wo ll go with me he wanted me to go with him and buy the new Super Nintendo release and whenever I went there it was a bunch at t Currently [ __ ] 27 to 33 year old males sit at seven o'clock in the morning in front of the game stop with their wife in the car in the passenger seat waiting for them [ __ ] to get their game so they can drive back home like it's just a yes daddy I'm cold exactly every single 30- year old boomer waiting to get the old console they had before i still have mine to gamestop right i mean it is i i i when im near a play stop its nice to go in and you know how it is is because i used to always be my gamestop how of course right it's my favorite spot whenever i was a kid so i'll always go and check in and see what they have man and uh this gamestop best buy in the suburbs launching the lich King Burning Crusade Cataclys m and i think mr pandaria was the last we preordered and after that w we had digital downloads so we waited out there in the cold in the rain it's [ __ ] it's ugly outside we did that , man, it was great, I still remember

So clear that Burning Crusade release night is weird to me because that kind of freeze is still there and sometimes I go back into that freeze and I'll be like man man those were some good [ __ ] times man oh my god god gamestop must be good everyone buys their stock yes true its easy yes good times let's see here i gotta find this uh i gotta find this other video and watch it i got it for Halo released reach last line of release ever waited for and it was weird yeah I mean like halo reach like when was that like 2000 and like I don't know how like 12 13 something like that I don't know dozen tennis yeah maybe it was 2011 it was so early damn I thought it After that I feel like midnight releases obviously aren't really done anymore because everyone has digital downloads but if you were there it was a good [ __ ] Time man it's been a good [ __ ] time and now we still have to pre-order stuff, although there's no [ __ ] reason to pre-order for a game that has a pre-order now unless you want some sort of head count from people who are going to play the game to allocate server space in advance, yes, but a lot of the games that are pre-orders are [ __ ] single player game There are no online [ __ ] lobbies anyway, but there isn't Reason like the reason gamestop EB games [ __ ] game crazy. All those other Best Buy stores used to have pre-orders because they had a number of minds of how many copies they stocked and would like because you'd remember how you'd likely go when a game came out on day one , and it's like, oh, do you have any new copies of gears of war or halo 3 or something like oh no we don't have you have you preordered no okay well then you're [ __ ] yeah preorder for free for newly skinned horses yeah I agree

So clear that Burning Crusade release night is weird to me because that kind of freeze is still there and sometimes I go back into that freeze and I'll be like man man those were some good [ __ ] times man oh my god god gamestop must be good everyone buys their stock yes true its easy yes good times let's see here i gotta find this uh i gotta find this other video and watch it i got it for Halo releases hit last line of release ever waited for and it was weird yeah I mean halo reach when was that like 2000 and how I don't know how 12 13 something like that me don't know dozen tennis yeah maybe it was 2011 it was so early damn I thought so After that I feel like midnight releases obviously aren't really done anymore because everyone has digital downloads but when you were there was it a good [ __ ] time man it's been a good [ __ ] time and now we still have to pre-order stuff, although there's no [ __ ] reason to pre-order for a game that has a pre-order now, unless you want to get some sort of headcount from people, who will be playing the game to allocate server space in advance, yes, but a lot of the games that are pre-order are [ __ ] single player game There are no online [ __ ] lobbies anyway, but there's no reason like the reason why gamestop EB games are [ __ ] game crazy All those other best buy stores used to have preorders because they had a number of heads on how many copies they stock and would like because you would remember as you probably go would if a game came out on day one and it's like, oh, do you have any new copies of gears of war or halo 3 or something like oh no we don't have any you preordered no okay well then you're [ __ ] yeah b present free for newly skinned horses yeah exactly