World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King will add a new option to the game's class roster with the introduction of the first hero class, the necromantic death knight. During the Second and Third Wars, the people of Azeroth learned to fear these merciless, unholy opponents and their terrifying powers. Leading legions of the undead into battle during the Third War, the Lich King's death knights proved both their strength and their cunning on several occasions, making them an invaluable part of the Scourge army.

In Wrath of the Lich King, you will be able to pick up a runeblade, don some plate armor, and wreak serious havoc using both melee abilities and offensive magic. To give you an early glimpse at the design philosophy behind the new class, we sat down with the World of Warcraft design team to talk about the role the death knight will play in the expansion's story as well as in its gameplay, and to get their thoughts about goals and ideas for the new class.

The biggest news at this year's BlizzCon was the announcement of World of Warcraft's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King

One of the things we knew very early on during development of Wrath of the Lich King was that we wanted to add an entirely new class to the existing ones. wow gold We actually considered several other class candidates before we decided on the death knight, but we felt that this was the perfect fit for the theme of Wrath of the Lich King for a lot of reasons.

Since the expansion is set in Northrend and you'll be fighting the Lich King, it makes sense to add a class that is directly connected to the coming conflict. The death knights you will be able to play are no longer allied with the Lich King; instead, they have joined forces with the Horde or the Alliance to fight against Arthas. So by playing a death knight, you're engaged in the story of Wrath of the Lich King right from the start, which makes the death knight a logical class choice for the expansion from a lore point of view. And since we're designing this class to be able to fill a tanking role in groups, death knights will also be a viable and interesting choice for them, since the tank is one of those absolutely vital group roles.

One of our main goals for the death knights is to make them mesh well with the game both in terms of the expansion's lore context and also in terms of being a valuable addition to the current class lineup, and so far we're really happy with how the class is coming along.

How do you think adding another tanking class to the existing class lineup will affect the classes that are currently filling tanking spots in groups and raids?When deciding which type of class we would add to World of Warcraft, we also took a very careful look at the current state of the game. The questions we asked ourselves were which kind of class roles are seeing the most use, which class roles are most desirable in groups right now, and what can we do to best meet this demand? Tanks play a critical role in any group, such that without a tank, you really don't have a group. We think that adding another tanking class will make it easier for players to form viable groups for dungeons and raids, but that won't be at the expense of existing tanks.

The design balance we're aiming for is one where all the tank classes are equally good at tanking in general so that you can use whatever tank you happen to have for five-player content, but at the same time we want tanks to be clearly distinct so they excel in different ways in various raid encounters. cheap wow gold So our goal is to make the death knight a viable, fun tank that coexists with the current tanking classes without replacing them. It's also important to keep in mind that even though the death knight is a hero class, that doesn't mean it is more powerful than the other classes, just that it will offer a very different playing experience.