Jeff Kaplan: It's funny, because the first question you asked me was "what's the thing that keeps me up at night," and that's Wintergrasp, which is a really big challenge. The Death Knight is the opposite of that question: He's the thing that's gone the most right for this expansion. The idea is awesome, and it fits this expansion better than anything.
The Death Knight starting experience, I think, is one of the coolest quest experiences we've ever made. It goes through various phases where you feel the world dynamically changing as you progress through the storyline.
The class itself is amazingly fun and visceral. He's got a new resource mechanic -- the rune system -- so he feels completely different than any class you've played before. He's got abilities like Death Grip, and there's no better feeling than Death Gripping something over to you. It's like Death Knight crack or something. Casting that ability, whatever class you play, you're going to have Death Knight envy as soon as you do that a few times. Then the ghouls, every spell and ability in his arsenal, they all just tie so directly into the class. He just feels great.
The number of people who have leveled Death Knights to 80 in the beta has simply been amazing, so we have this whole group on the beta forums who represent the class as if they've been playing it for four years like the other classes.
I think the hero class concept came off really well. We have a lot of people say "aren't you worried that Wrath of the Lich King is going to come out and everyone's going to play a Death Knight?" And to that I answer, everyone is going to play a Death Knight. You'll probably have everyone play a Death Knight to level 58, and then you'll have a group of people, sort of representative of how many other classes we have, who will actually take the class to 80 and go "this is the class for me."
Classes are a very subjective thing. It's like going to an ice cream store and picking a flavor. Some people always pick healers. Some people always pick Rogues. Some people always pick tanking classes. It's just going to appeal to some people. But I think everyone will do that starting experience... it's just too cool. And it's so great logging in at level 55... you're getting all blue rewards, you're getting an epic mount, it just feels pretty awesome.
GameSpy: Is there any concern that because this is the first new class in a few years, that there will be a glut of players who level the Death Knight to 80 and find it hard to find work, so to speak?
Jeff Kaplan: A little bit. Obviously, that would be a concern. You still do have to go through a leveling experience to get there. There's going to be so many people who, when Lich King comes out, want to be the first to 80, or the first guild into Naxxramas, or the first 5v5 team to get above 1600... there's so many people with so many play styles, that I don't think everyone's going to focus on getting that Death Knight to 80.GameSpy: With Lich King just a few weeks away, do you find yourself kind of shocked sitting here saying how this new class was the thing that's gone the smoothest?
Jeff Kaplan: Yeah, I actually am very surprised. [laughs] I think we knew going into it, as a development team, how challenging it was to add another class. I think another race is challenging from a production standpoint, but it really doesn't do much to the balance of the game.
Adding a new class is really a delicate subject, and because we focused on it so heavily for a long time now -- back when we would have been discussing Burning Crusade, this idea was actually already in existence and being worked on -- we spent so much time and energy ensuring that we got it right that I think it's really paid off for us.
