About This Blog

Welcome to gnomeDK.

I’m Dedbitt, the resident death knight. My partner is Gillderon, the geek behind this site. Together we came up with the idea for this blog centered around WoW’s newest class, death knight. I’ll be your guide to all things death knight while Gillderon keeps this place nice and shiney, but expect us both to do some off speccing and doing different roles from time to time.

There are a lot of WoW blogs out there already. We had both thought about doing some WoW blogging in the past, however we never felt we had enough new content or ideas to justify joining the bloggers already covering most of the angles. Then Blizzard introduced the new death knight class, which I decided to switch to the instant I read about it in the program guide at BlizzCon 2007. With death knights being a new class that meant everything dealing with them, from the character models to theorycrafting to blogging is all new for everyone. So we decided to be a part of the initial launch of death knight content.

I’ve been playing the same rogue character since I started with WoW in December 2004. I tried a few alts, but only one alt ever became level capped, and that was done so I could get some raid tanking experience in anticipation of my future death knight. I love my rogue and have done much with it. I raided up into tier 2 content in Azeroth. In Outland my guild is pushing through tier 6, trying to down Illidan before expansion. I’ve done PvP, from getting a Knight-Captain rank in the old honor system to 5v5 arena teams. The rogue is exalted throughout Azeroth and Outland, has won the Stranglehorn Vale fishing contest, has all the raid titles (though Hand of Ad’al always felt like the beginning or ending of a joke), and a pretty green netherdrake. Above all these last three, almost four, years have given me an intimate understanding of the rogue class which allows me to be one of the top melee DPSers in my guild. And this impressive character, on expansion day, will be sitting in Shattrath City gaining rested XP… for a long time.

Yeah, that’s 4 years I won’t get back now because I’m rerolling. Oh well, nothing much planned for the next 4 years. MMOs are all time sinks, put in enough effort and anyone (case in point) can becoming a pixel guru.

That says a lot, I think, for the death knight class. Though within my own guild I’m seeing very little interest in taking up a death knight as their new main. If that turns out to be the case everywhere then I hope I can help my death knight main character brethren out there, and probably all of the death knight alts we’re bound to see as well. Of course some of my motivations for finally switching main characters aren’t related to the death knight class so much. My guild has traditionally had a tank shortage, so a death knight who can DPS or tank should be welcomed. When was the last time who had a group say, “Hey, we need a rogue before we can go.” I’ve also always wanted to play a gnome. My rogue is a human, because when I created it I was new to MMOs and was quite boring and unimaginative in terms of creating my character. The desire was never strong enough to justify rerolling my rogue for another rogue, but I’ve got to start over with a death knight anyway so why not. Besides, what in all of Azeroth is more evil, in appearance and soul, than a female gnome death knight with pink pigtails?

I’ve been lucky in terms of being about to experience death knights early, especially with my fascination with them since BlizzCon. Having gone to BlizzCon I was one of the first players invited into the Wrath of the Lich King beta. I went straight for a new death knight and never looked back. What doubts I had were put down by the starter area. What boredom I had leveling through Outland was tempered by the speed of progression and forgotten after my first Northrend quest chain. After hitting level 80 on beta I’ve spent my time preparing for my real death knight when expansion hits: reading related news, going over the theorycraft, stocking up for leveling and profession skill ups. I’ve managed to run into some pitfalls, in beta and in my planning, but I’ve found ways around them and this blog is a great opportunity to share my experience with the many new death knights we’ll see soon on our live realms, both those switching to mains and rolling a new, fun alt.

Between now and expansion’s launch date this blog will be focusing on preparing for your death knight. You may be surprised how much you can do right now to make things easier later. After Wrath of the Lich King is released we’ll be leveling up together. Outland leveling, given most of us have done it before, is a good time to feel out the death knight and get to know the class. Once we hit Northrend we’ll be ready to take on all of the new content and death knight abilities. Eventually we’ll catch up to our guild mates and reach end game. My focus will remain on raiding, but with Lake Wintergrasp I’m sure PvP will make some appearances. I can already imagine what some of the old world events are going to be like with death knights (dibs on Great-father Winter’s lap).