I just don’t see LK/Knights of the Ebon would be too picky who they raise to serve the LK.
Or would it break the game’s lore if there was a Zandalari DK serving both the Bwonsamdi, Loa of Death, and the LK?
Two main reasons probably.
1.) They want players to level Allied Races up from 1 to earn their Heritage Armor; being able to make a DK means getting a 58-level head start on that grind over any other class.
2.) New Death Knights have their own class-specific starting experience, and DK introductory quests involve finding out how your race would be among the playable Death Knights at the start of WotLK. Certain Allied Races - Nightborne, void elves, Mag’har, Highmountain and Lightforged in particular - either outright didn’t exist or weren’t present in the EK, Northrend or Kalimdor during the time of the Scourge, so it wouldn’t make sense for any of them to be Death Knights in keeping with the timing of the Knights of Acherus’ reanimations.
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Probably wouldn’t be too lore breaky, but there’s a bunch of reasonable points to be made about why there’s not Allied Race DKs at the moment.
- Dark Irons never had a huge presence outside of Khaz Modan until they joined the Alliance under Moira.
- Kul Tirans and Zandalari largely kept to themselves until BfA and Cataclysm (Zul’s Uprising) respectively.
- Highmountain and Nightborne basically never left the Broken Isles until they joined the Horde.
- The Allied Mag’har are from a different timeline (although and Outland Mag’har could easily be a DK - see Dranosh Saurfang)
- Lightforged Draenei weren’t even on the same planet when all that was going down.
- Void Elves didn’t exist until now.
Reasonably, the only races that could be DKs would be Dark Irons, Kul Tirans, and Zandalari - maybe Mag’har; much in the same way as Worgen DKs (Arugal instead of Gilneas) or Goblin DKs (Steamwheedle instead of Bilgewater), you could say that Mag’har DKs are from Outland. But even then, they’d more than likely be in very short supply.
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From 20 you mean.
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explain Worgen DKs or Goblin DKs? Neither existed/playable when Wrath was out.
Just bc NPCs races begin to be playable, doesn’t mean DK hero class should exclude those new allied races.
Only thing that I can see is it MIGHT break the lore of the LK and the Knights of the Ebon Blade.
If Draenei can be DKs then certainly Mag’har could be DKs regardless of which timeline since they both originate from the Outlands.
I am not saying all races should have a DK option as it makes no sense to have a Panda DK as the Panda people stayed exclusively on Panderia until Mists Expansion.
This is the reason why. Has nothing to do with lore.
Well no, not regardless of which timeline. One version of the Mag’har originate from Outlands, which would be the one that would be the “Mag’har DK” option lore wise, and the current playable version of the Mag’har are very much not from Outlands, at least not a fel-corrupt version of it like how ours is.
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Worgen were fighting the Scourge in Silverpine long before they became playable via Arugal’s summoned worgen army, his experiments ob the people of Pyrewood Village and any other Gilneans who got infected north of the wall. The second example is the explicitly stated source for playable worgen Death Knights; they were turned into worgen by Arugal, then killed by the Scourge, then brought to Acherus and reanimated.
Goblins have been all over Azeroth, helping out the Horde in particular, since WoW began. So naturally some of them were among the casualties of the Horde’s various battles and skirmishes during that time period, including conflicts against the Scourge, leading to dead goblins who, like the above worgen, were brought to Acherus and raised as death knights.
The thing is, player Death Knights are explicitly Knights of the Ebon Blade, and more importantly, formerly the Scourge’s Knights of Acherus. It’s built into their leveling zones. Most of the Allied Races’ times of emergence or arrival on Azeroth don’t fit chronologically into them being able to be raised as Knights of Acherus.
What about normal Draenei? Kinda weird for them to be DKs too.
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Though is it really? Where do you imagine a stalwart Vindicator from the Exodar looking to make his mark on a new homeworld and deliver justice might go to lend a hand in the battle against evil? Might he or she, perhaps, seek out the like-minded Light adherents of the Argent Dawn to join up, and so potentially fall in battle against the undead?
Moreover, during the events of TBC a bunch of heroes took time off from the battles in Outland to lend their weight to putting down the impending uprising from Zul’Aman - not so far from Scourge territory - so any number of such heroes could have run afoul of the undead along the way and ended up getting dragged off for reanimation as Death Knights. There was also Quel’danas; the Scourge were present at the point where the plateau was originally breached by the Dead Scar, attacking demons and mortals alike.
Additionally in the lead-up to the war against the Scourge the Ghoul Plague was killing people - commoners and heroes - in droves all over the place, providing additional corpses for reanimation as new champions of the Scourge.
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Not all of them. Dark Iron Dwarves, Kul Tirians, and Zandalari were all very active races. The Zandalari even sent an expedition to Northrend.
Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne could also probably be justified with a bit of stretching since there’s nothing really stopping a lone explorer/exile from getting killed by the Scourge (or the Scourge might of simply sent a small force to the Broken Isles at some point).
The only Allied Races we can definitely rule out are Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei, and Mag’har Orcs. There were no Lightforged Draenei or Mag’har (well, no Draenor Mag’har) on Azeroth during WotLK, and Void Elves likely didn’t even exist back then.
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The Zandalari went to Northrend after the events that created the player Death Knights happened. So no, they wouldn’t have become Knights of Acherus.
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I don’t think it’s really established when the Zandalari first arrived in Northrend, just that they were there when we showed up in Zul’Drak.
That is a fairly minor point however, the Zandalari were out in the world and doing things well before the events of WotLK. It’s not unbelievable that some of them could of been turned into DK’s.
At the end of the day if Blizzard really wanted there to be Allied Race DKs, any potential story pitfalls could be overcome. For the most part it seems to mostly be a design decision to keep all Allied Races starting at level 20.
Correction: Agents of the Zandalari government were out in the world doing things. Not bands of mercenary Zandalari heroes questing and raiding and dungeoneering against the world’s most dangerous foes.
Culturally, the Zandalari people were basically isolationists. They weren’t new members of a faction whose citizens were looking to claim their own place among its champions.
The whole point of the player Death Knights is that narrative-wise, they’re formerly player-style champions of Azeroth who fell to the Scourge and got reanimated. That’s the idea; they’re “us” if we had fallen and been raised up as a weapon to “raid” one of our own hero NPC’s and his allies in the form of Tirion Fordring and the Argent Dawn.
There weren’t Zandalari, Highmountain, etc. “champions of Azeroth” running around battling the world’s villains and threats at that time; that’s a new development that’s arisen with those Allied Races joining the Alliance and Horde.
I think it’s It’s weird for the to be NE death knights. I figured they’d be humans, and Blood Elves, maybe some Orcs dwarves too.
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