14 years ago, the Death Knight in WoW was a lot tougher than it is today – and WotLK Classic brings him back that way

With Wrath of the Lich King, the new expansion for WoW Classic will be released in 2022. While nothing about the content is new per se, many of you probably have little memory of how different some things were back then.

The WotLK Classic beta has been running for a few weeks and those who have been invited can already get an idea of ​​the content. Wrath of the Lich King was originally released in November 2008, almost 14 years ago, and is considered one of the best WoW expansions.

Northrend was open as a new continent, with level 80 you could face many new enemies and finally Arthas, the super mean villain from Warcraft 3. One of the biggest features was the death knight as a new class.

Death Knights (“DK” for short) were not only the first new class in WoW, but also the first “hero class”. Back then, they started right at level 55, significantly higher than most other heroes.

With a new blog post Blizzard explains again what the death knights actually are. And those who know the class of today should be prepared to learn it all over again from scratch. A lot has happened in the last 14 years.

As a little reminder: Everything you need to know about World of Warcraft – in 3 minutes:

Death knights used to be a lot more complex – but also stronger

These are the differences: In the “good old days” of WotLK, things were much more complicated. First, there were the talents, which will similarly return in Dragonflight. There were significantly more points to distribute than today in Shadowlands.

With the death knight, however, there was also the fact that the trees were not clear. Each specialization could tank and each could deal damage – unlike today. In fact, Frost tanks were sometimes even more common than other specializations.

The only important thing was to have a defense rating that prevented critical hits from opponents and the Frost presence. Yes, back then, death knights still had presences, similar to paladin auras:

• Blood Presence: Increases damage dealt by 15% and heals you for 4% of your direct damage dealt.
• Frost Presence: Increases your Stamina by 8%, increases your armor bonus from items by 60%, reduces damage taken by 8%, and increases threat dealt.
• Unholy Presence: Increases attack speed by 15%, movement speed by 15%, and reduces global cooldown for all abilities by 0.5 seconds.

It was similar with runes, by the way. There were frost, blood, and unholy runes. Many skills required a specific combination. Talents also gave you death runes that could be used anywhere – like runes today.

In addition, like today, there is runic power, which serves as a resource for other abilities. However, all of this required significantly more planning and coordination of one’s own abilities in order to let as many runes as possible fade away continuously, but also to have the right runes and enough rune power ready for emergencies.

Sounds unfair? That’s how it works, because unlike in the current WoW DPS list, death knights were almost always in the first places back then. Even as a tank. If you could play your DK, you were a top DPS – a hero class.

When can I play WotLK Classic? There is no concrete release date yet, but WotLK Classic is scheduled for release in 2022 and according to Ion Hazzikostas also appear before Dragonflight. When exactly that will be, we cannot say yet. Current estimates point to October.

If you want to prepare for WotLK Classic, you should definitely not play a death knight in retail. The two versions are just too different from each other.

Did you remember how differently the death knight played back then or did the information here just remind you of suppressed details? You can test your WoW knowledge in our quiz:

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