With every race getting death knights, I think Blizzard has thrown in another Draenei-level lore fuckup.
1. The existence of the Forsaken was due to the fact that they were freed from the lich king, but were not accepted by their living counterparts in Quelthalas/Stormwind, so they took living in Lordaeron (Undercity.)
If the Alliance races are cool with having their towns filled with the living dead now, why would they still be hostile to the Forsaken or have undead warriors as kill-on-sight anymore?
2. If I understand the Death Knight questline correctly, you start as a new Death Knight that gives up on joining the Scourge halfway through and betrays them and escapes to your freedom. Why would human/undead death knights automatically join the Horde/Alliance if they are without loyalty at that point? Why does only the Alliance accept type A undead human Death Knight whereas the Horde only accepts type B undead human Death Knight? I don't see why any Death Knights would have an outstanding loyalty to Sylvanas at that point and would be hated by the Alliance for claiming a rival nationality.
I can understand gnomes or trolls or orcs living or dead only accepted by one faction, but I don't see how there are two classes of humans that went through the exact same thing, were living human warriors/paladins seeking more power, got nervous, broke free, are now undead Death Knights, but only some join the Alliance and only others join the Horde.
For that matter I don't understand why a human death knight has a different model than the Forsaken death knight, but I understand thats just a pre-existing models thing.
3. Hasn't the game established that dead night elves are wisps? I had assumed this whole time there weren't undead night elves in game anywhere just because they became incorporeal spirit beings on death. Night elf death knights don't really make any sense.
Basically, you don't "really" belong to your faction (Horde or Alliance), but to the Knights of the Ebon Blade and act as sort of an ambassador (due to your former allegiance) to your respective faction.
Also, Deathknights are not automatically undead, most of them are still amongst the living (just like the scourge's necromancers and acolytes), so there's a distinct difference between a Human Deathknight and a Forsaken Deathknight - the latter was undead before becoming a Deathknight (but still humanoid ingame for gameplay reasons), the former was not (and likely still isn't).
Death Knights don't have to actually be undead - Arthas never died. Furthermore, dead Night Elves are not just Wisps. All the Highborne undead are Night Elves, as an example.
Before you start to drift, and your soul begins to scream.
I just wanted to tell you, that you're listening to a dream.
Also, Deathknights are not automatically undead, most of them are still amongst the living (just like the scourge's necromancers and acolytes), so there's a distinct difference between a Human Deathknight and a Forsaken Deathknight - the latter was undead before becoming a Deathknight (but still humanoid ingame for gameplay reasons), the former was not (and likely still isn't).
Originally Posted by Maestroquark
Death Knights don't have to actually be undead - Arthas never died. Furthermore, dead Night Elves are not just Wisps. All the Highborne undead are Night Elves, as an example.
Ah okay, thanks for clearing that up. I do remember the highborne undeads now.
Originally Posted by s[orc]ery
The thing you have to note when talking about the Death knight quest chain is that it covers several different phases in time. I believe that the first phase (uncorrupted New Avalon) was pre-WoW and pre-Naxx 1.0, but the decimation of the Scarlet Crusade and the forming of the Scarlet Onslaught/Argent Crusade was nearing the end of TBC. Also, the fact that Inigo Montoy is missing during the LHC event means it clearly occurs after WoW 1.0.
As for the bosses, i think we have to accept that they were never killed except for Kel'Thuzad, who is resurrected using the stolen phylactery.
Wait, is the starting line the same for everyone? It wouldn't make much sense if the Draenei Death Knights showed up before the crash of the Exodar in the heart of Azeroth...
Wait, is the starting line the same for everyone? It wouldn't make much sense if the Draenei Death Knights showed up before the crash of the Exodar in the heart of Azeroth...
I think it's the same. We can just handwave this inconsistency for gameplay reasons though, not a big deal. In my opinion, anyways.
Wait, is the starting line the same for everyone? It wouldn't make much sense if the Draenei Death Knights showed up before the crash of the Exodar in the heart of Azeroth...
The quest line is the same for everyone with exception of one step, where you have to kill one of your own race (orc DK kills orc prisoner, gnome DK kills gnome prisoner, etc. Including a nice speech by the prisoner who you know personally about how you should turn away from the dark etc).
But since the Death Knight quest series is after the fall of Naxxramas (after WOW-1.0) we can also assume it's after the landing of the Exodar. Although admittedly it's still a bit weird for do-goodie-Draenei to turn Death Knight. I mean they could have just gone demon if they wanted to live out their dark side
But since the Death Knight quest series is after the fall of Naxxramas (after WOW-1.0) we can also assume it's after the landing of the Exodar. Although admittedly it's still a bit weird for do-goodie-Draenei to turn Death Knight. I mean they could have just gone demon if they wanted to live out their dark side
If you take a good look around the Death Knight starting area, you'll notice there's little choice in the part of becoming a Death Knight. You die, your corpse gets taken to Acherus, you get raised there by the Scourge. If you show signs of having memories of your past self, they kill you on the spot. It's not so much "A do-goodie-Draenei turning Death Knight" as "A do-goodie-Draenei getting killed fighting the Scourge and getting raised some time later and possibly turned into a Death Knight".
This also means that from a storyline point of view playable Death Knights are undead: They aren't for gameplay reasons for the same reason the Forsaken aren't.
But since the Death Knight quest series is after the fall of Naxxramas (after WOW-1.0) we can also assume it's after the landing of the Exodar. Although admittedly it's still a bit weird for do-goodie-Draenei to turn Death Knight. I mean they could have just gone demon if they wanted to live out their dark side
I don't think they had a choice. You saw how Razuvious was evaluating freshly resurrected DKs so I believe all DKs are undead which means they died for real (Arthas is also Undead in Warcraft 3 although we never see him die onscreen).
I mean, it's not like they got a screen that said:
The Lich King wants to resurrect you. Do you accept?
[ Yes ] [ No ] [ Maybe ]
Although admittedly it's still a bit weird for do-goodie-Draenei to turn Death Knight. I mean they could have just gone demon if they wanted to live out their dark side
Auchindoun is full of evil necromancer Draenai.
The Demon corruption is generally all about getting more personal power just because of greed.
Kealthas had no reason to seek the power he did, the Scryers and High Elves seemed to manage the loss of the Sunwell quite well without draining demons.
Illidan had no reason to seek the powers he recieved, his twin brother is also very powerful without allying with demons and betraying everyone.
The Eredar had a wonderous magical society (or so the Draenai tell us...), why did they have to go turn themelves into Demons..? What did they gain? What did the Orcs gain when they did the same? Velen and Durotan saw the danger and managed to survive without corrupting themselves and their followers.
For every character corrupted by Demons, there is one who didn't take that path and has a similar amount of power using a better path.
The Scourge corruption is generally all about being manipulated to seek the power to defend others, or someone being killed/captured and turned against their will.
Arthas was driven mad by the Scourge and took Frostmourne to gain to power to end the threat.
Kelthusad was corrupted by the Lich King's whipers and even had second thoughts at the end and tried to turn back.
Highlord Mograine was killed and turned into a Deathknight against his will.
The first Liches and even The Lich King himself where transformed against their will.
Yes there are exceptions, I'm sure someone will point them out but they don't matter. We can assume that the Draenai Death Knights didn't have a whole lot of choice in what happened to them, whereas they did have a choice to escape Argus or stay (assuming they are as old as Velen, I'm guessing most arn't).
I highly doubt that players will be able to loot Frostmourn, given it's "secondary" effects.
A lot of its secondary effects were due to Ner'zhul's influence. Given you presumably pick it up from his cold, dead hands (all puns intended), it's possible that it's clean enough to use.
People got the Corrupted Ashbringer as well, remember.
For every character corrupted by Demons, there is one who didn't take that path and has a similar amount of power using a better path.
Luke: Vader... Is the dark side stronger?
Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
Next up, Arthas will redeem himself by killing Ner'Zhul after they get somehow separated during the fight.
Originally Posted by Dancing Wu Li Master
A lot of its secondary effects were due to Ner'zhul's influence. Given you presumably pick it up from his cold, dead hands (all puns intended), it's possible that it's clean enough to use.
People got the Corrupted Ashbringer as well, remember.
And it kept whispering to you. I don't have the exact quotes at hand, but I can remember that they weren't exactly friendly.
The quest line is the same for everyone with exception of one step, where you have to kill one of your own race (orc DK kills orc prisoner, gnome DK kills gnome prisoner, etc. Including a nice speech by the prisoner who you know personally about how you should turn away from the dark etc).
But since the Death Knight quest series is after the fall of Naxxramas (after WOW-1.0) we can also assume it's after the landing of the Exodar. Although admittedly it's still a bit weird for do-goodie-Draenei to turn Death Knight. I mean they could have just gone demon if they wanted to live out their dark side
Come to finish the job, have you?
You'll look me in the eyes when...
<name>?
<name>, I'd recognize those face tentacles anywhere... What... What have they done to you, <name>?
You don't remember me, do you? Blasted Scourge... They've tried to drain you of everything that made you a righteous force of reckoning. Every last ounce of good... Everything that made you a draenei!
Think, <name>. Think back. Try and remember the proud mountains of Argus, where you were born. Remember the splendor of life, <brother/sister>. You were a champion of the draenei once! This isn't you.
Listen to me, <name>. You must fight against the Lich King's control. He is a monster that wants to see this world - our world - in ruin. Don't let him use you to accomplish his goals. You were once a hero and you can be again. Fight, damn you! Fight his control!
Knight Commander Plaguefist yells: What's going on in there? What's taking so long, <name>?
There... There's no more time for me. I'm done for. Finish me off, <name>. Do it or they'll kill us both. <name>... Remember Argus. Don't let that happen to this world.
Bold is mine. If our player character Draenei Death Knight was born on Argus, then he had to have come from the crashed Exodar. There is a draenei NPC in Chillwind Point, it's completely plausible that on some night, Scourge forces came and abducted some poor Draenei aide, guard, or something.
Just as an aside, does anyone have screenshots or text for the conversations when a dwarf, orc, tauren, or troll death knights have to execute a prisoner? The WoWWiki site doesn't have the conversations for those races.
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Originally Posted by Tacitus
And it kept whispering to you. I don't have the exact quotes at hand, but I can remember that they weren't exactly friendly.
The Ashbringer can whisper all it wants. We had C'thun whispering random threats to us, but we went ahead and killed him anyway. Of course, it was creepy as hell (and so are the whispers from that trinket you get in ST, the aura of poison, forget what it's called).
I think we're all concerned that if a player or NPC picked up Frostmourne, that he would be transformed into the new Lich King, and now we're back at Step 1. More than likely we'll have to cleanse Frostmourne some way.
A question to the Wrathgate line, I read there was a quest to retrieve Bolvar's shield. What I'm wondering is, what happened to the body? State funeral? Bloody Corpse? Or just plain missing...
Right now, when you turn in the Wrathgate quest, basically everything disappears and the red dragons appear. Everything is on fire, and there's a lot of flowers. For the horde, you grab Saurfang's armor from a pile of flowers. Presumably, Alexstrasza and the Reds either burned all of the plague victims at the Wrathgate or used them to create the flowers. It's hard to say for sure until they implement the cutscene, though.
Right now, when you turn in the Wrathgate quest, basically everything disappears and the red dragons appear. Everything is on fire, and there's a lot of flowers. For the horde, you grab Saurfang's armor from a pile of flowers. Presumably, Alexstrasza and the Reds either burned all of the plague victims at the Wrathgate or used them to create the flowers. It's hard to say for sure until they implement the cutscene, though.
I'd further like to add that you actually get to test a few different types of plague as Horde doing quests for the Forsaken. The effects vary heavily between each batch, the effects range from stomach pains for the earlier quests, to driving people to a complete berserk rage who'll blindly attack anything no matter if they're friend or foe, to simply dissolving whoever it affects. So depending on what variation of the plague we're talking about, there might not be much of a body to find.
Also, Deathknights are not automatically undead, most of them are still amongst the living (just like the scourge's necromancers and acolytes), so there's a distinct difference between a Human Deathknight and a Forsaken Deathknight - the latter was undead before becoming a Deathknight (but still humanoid ingame for gameplay reasons), the former was not (and likely still isn't).
All the Acherus Death Knights are dead(Undead rather). When you create a Death Knight, it specifically says you died as a champion of the light, and you were reborn to the call of the Lich King. In Acherus itself, as soon as you walk out to meet Instructor Razuvious, he's picking our corpses for the Necromancers to resurrect, and like yourself as soon as they're brought back, they hear the call of the Lich King.
"A Hero....that's what you once were. You stood boldly against the shadow, and purchased another dawn for the world....with your life, but the evil you fought is not so easily banished, the victory you claimed, not so easily held. For now, the specter of death looms above the world yet again, and it has found new champions to bring about it's final reign. Knights of darkness, wielding runes of death and destruction, bound by the will of the Lich King. THIS is the hour of their ascension, this is the hour of your dark rebirth *Lightning sound*"
Last edited by Emeraude : 09/24/08 at 1:33 PM.
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With every race getting death knights, I think Blizzard has thrown in another Draenei-level lore fuckup.
They did retcon death knights into being just about anybody. The death knights in Warcraft 3 were specifically paladins who were disillusioned with the light and joined the Lich King. Of course, the death knights in Warcraft 2 were Gul'dan's warlocks who were killed and then had their spirits fused into a dead body of a human knight.
They did retcon death knights into being just about anybody. The death knights in Warcraft 3 were specifically paladins who were disillusioned with the light and joined the Lich King. Of course, the death knights in Warcraft 2 were Gul'dan's warlocks who were killed and then had their spirits fused into a dead body of a human knight.
They did not retcon anything. There are just multiple types of Death Knights out there. There's the original Death Knights, whom were creations of Gul'dan. There's the original Scourge Death Knights, of which Arthas was the first. And finally there's the latest generation of Death Knights. Some (Well, one anyway) of the original Scourge Death Knights are even bitter about how "Practically anyone can be a Death Knight" these days. Abbendis in her diary specifically notes that that the Death Knights she saw razing the Death Knight starting area were different from any Death Knights she'd seen before.
This no retcon, there's just another, new generation of Death Knights. This new generation of Death Knights are the ones we can play in WotLK.
When you create a Death Knight, it specifically says you died as a champion of the light, and you were reborn to the call of the Lich King. In Acherus itself, as soon as you walk out to meet Instructor Razuvious, he's picking our corpses for the Necromancers to resurrect, and like yourself as soon as they're brought back, they hear the call of the Lich King.
You know, this and the "kill your friend to prove your loyalty" quests dictate that the first thing I do when the servers come up is create an undead DK just to see how those are written.
You know, this and the "kill your friend to prove your loyalty" quests dictate that the first thing I do when the servers come up is create an undead DK just to see how those are written.
Ask and you shall receive.
This is the Undead dialog:
Come to finish the job, have you?
Ironic, isn't it? To be killed...
<name>?
<name>, I'd recognize that decay anywhere... What... What have they done to you, <name>?
You don't remember me, do you? We were humans once - long, long ago - until Lordaeron fell to the Scourge. Your transformation to a Scourge zombie came shortly after my own. Not long after that, our minds were freed by the Dark Lady.
A pact was made, brother! We vowed vengeance against the Lich King! For what he had done to us! We battled the Scourge as Forsaken, pushing them back into the plaguelands and freeing Tirisfal! You and I were champions of the Forsaken!
Listen to me, <name>. You must fight against the Lich King's control. He is a monster that wants to see this world - our world - in ruin. Don't let him use you to accomplish his goals AGAIN. You were once a hero and you can be again. Fight, damn you! Fight his control!
Knight Commander Plaguefist yells: What's going on in there? What's taking so long, <name>?
There... There's no more time for me. I'm done for. Finish me off, <name>. Do it or they'll kill us both. <name>... Remember Tirisfal! This world is worth saving!
Do it, <name>! Put me out of my misery!
Showing once again the lighter/kinder side of the Forsaken.
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Heroes and people dying happen all the time, it doesn't mean you get turned into a Scourge because you died. There is a big difference between dying and getting some resurrection spell used on you and getting infected with some plague.
Death Knights were likely previously all paladins or warriors in the current Wrath world which also fits in with previous DKs in WC2 and WC3.
WC2 Death Knights were Orc Souls in Human Knight bodies if I remember correctly. There is no mention of what proficiencies the Orc souls had (if you can speak of proficiencies in this context). For all we know, they could have been Warlock souls or Warrior souls - we just don't know.
I also doubt that only fallen Paladins or Warriors can be Death Knights from the WoW lore point of view. Anyone is eligable since you are being taught from scratch in Ebon Hold after all. If you already could wield a 2h and powerful magic, then why all the deal about having 3 different teachers for 3 different talent trees in there?
I think the process looks more like this:
They start with any kind of corpse and resurrect it. They check if you are suitable mentally. If you struggle and do not accept the LK, you get killed/discarded right off the bat. Everyone who makes it past this filter gets sorted out by normal Darwinism: You survive the training, you get to stay.
Just a reminder, but since there is a new BETA build being pushed out today, there is a good chance that the Angrathar Gate chain will display properly the betrayal.
I'm sitting here hoping someone that has completed the chain will make their way there and attempt to talk to Alextrasza and see if anything comes up this time. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be just in-game character play, but it has been referenced as "movie" and "cinematic", so I'm holding onto hope here that it will turn out in fact to be something incredibly awesome.
Originally Posted by Liar
WC2 Death Knights were Orc Souls in Human Knight bodies if I remember correctly. There is no mention of what proficiencies the Orc souls had (if you can speak of proficiencies in this context). For all we know, they could have been Warlock souls or Warrior souls - we just don't know.
I also doubt that only fallen Paladins or Warriors can be Death Knights from the WoW lore point of view. Anyone is eligable since you are being taught from scratch in Ebon Hold after all. If you already could wield a 2h and powerful magic, then why all the deal about having 3 different teachers for 3 different talent trees in there?
I think the process looks more like this:
They start with any kind of corpse and resurrect it. They check if you are suitable mentally. If you struggle and do not accept the LK, you get killed/discarded right off the bat. Everyone who makes it past this filter gets sorted out by normal Darwinism: You survive the training, you get to stay.
To complement this, echoing on some other posts on the subject: Indeed, there have been different 'types' of DKs throughout the warcraft universe; from straight necromancy, to fallen people.
And to add my own speculation, if you would, I think that the most light-devout paladins that died in good standing with themselves and the light can't be raised back from the dead (ie; Uther's Tomb, despite being in the middle of the plaguelands is still guarded by light), but Paladins that died in a catastrophic way (Mograine Sr, killed by his own son and blade. Or Darion, who took his own life willingly to free his father -- see this in the final DK quests, after the Light of Dawn quest, it's flavor gossip text) can.
Heroes and people dying happen all the time, it doesn't mean you get turned into a Scourge because you died. There is a big difference between dying and getting some resurrection spell used on you and getting infected with some plague.
Death Knights were likely previously all paladins or warriors in the current Wrath world which also fits in with previous DKs in WC2 and WC3.
.....Death Knights are brought back via Necromancy, they were dead and are now Undead. A Resurrection is very different from what's happening in Acherus. And you don't need to have been killed by any plague to be brought back as a member of the Scourge. The Vyrkul are an example of this.
Originally Posted by Liar
WC2 Death Knights were Orc Souls in Human Knight bodies if I remember correctly. There is no mention of what proficiencies the Orc souls had (if you can speak of proficiencies in this context). For all we know, they could have been Warlock souls or Warrior souls - we just don't know.
I believe that all of the Death Knights in Warcraft 2 were originally members of Gul'dan's Shadow Council, the leading members. When Doomhammer took control of the Horde he slaughtered them all. Doomhammer didn't want Gul'dan using Orc Warriors in his experiment with Death Knights so he used the souls of the fallen Shadow Council members. I'm 95% sure that said Shadow Council members were all Warlocks across the board.
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09/24/08, 7:25 AM
