The Hero Class idea has been around since practically day 1 of World of Warcraft. Alongside Siege Weapons, Hero Classes had a permanent place of residence on the "Under Development" page until recently, when they both found their way into the new Wrath of the Lick King expansion. With Death Knights on the way, many players are struggling to adapt what they expected and wanted from Hero Classes to what Blizzard is giving them, which is a class that isn't more powerful, simply unique and starting at a higher level. Bornakk handles a few complaints and concerns directly in this post.

The entire post can be found behind the bump, but the gist of it is that Blizzard is fully aware that many players will create Death Knights simply because of the high starting level but the hope is that an equally large number of players will wash out quickly, leaving a somewhat small number of Death Knight "mains".

Q: Everyone will roll death knight alts because they start at lvl 60, so they have less work to do.

A: We do hope a lot of people try out the class, it should be a lot of fun. But we also know that people have their preferred style of play so we don't expect everybody to drop their current character(s) and play the Death Knight exclusively.

Q: It forces you to master a class in high-level areas where you need to know your class to succeed, and most new Death knights won't know how to play their class at all.

A: Just leveling up to reach Northrend will take time and should provide players some great experience in learning the new class.

Q: You will get less hours out of your death knight alt.

A: I'm a little confused here, but are you saying that it's a problem that you can't spend more hours at lower levels?

Q: Other classes will fall out of favor for alts, because they start at lvl 1, whereas Death Knights start at 60.

A: I'm not sure that other classes falling out of favor as alts is really a big deal, but I wanted to clarify that the starting level of the Death Knight has not been finalized, but they will start at a higher level as a level 1 Death Knight doesn't sound quite right.

Q: The massive flood of Death Knights will clog battlegrounds, making matches extremely uneven (No class variety, so less heals, druid buffs, etc.)

A: While a lot of people may make Death Knight alts to try out the class, especially near the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, not everybody is going to level them to 80 or switch them to their main character. Also, both factions will be interested in playing the Death Knight, so any lack of heals will probably go both ways.

Q: The lack of levels to obtain takes away what makes WoW so fun: Leveling up and gaining new abilities.

A: They will still need to level through Outland and Northrend which can take a fair amount of time.

Q: New players will have to wait months to try a class they may have wanted from the beginning.

A: We have not finalized way that the Death Knight will be unlocked yet, if that is what you are referring to.

We have wanted to make Hero Classes for a long time and we feel the Death Knight will be a fun one to start with while adding a great new element to the game for players to enjoy fighting with... and against.