WotLK beta - Death knight starting area

After I managed to install the Wrath of the Lich King beta client, one of the first things I did was of course check out the starting area of the expansion's new hero class, the death knight. They have an instanced zone just for them, as the setting is in the past, somewhere during the original Scourge invasion. You, a former Alliance or Horde hero, was taken and "converted" by the Scourge and are now a fearsome death knight, in the service of the Lich King, ready to wreak havoc on the helpless, and sometimes not so helpless, population of Azeroth.

You start at level 55, without any talent points, on a floating necropolis, somewhat like Naxxramas, that's hovering above the town of New Avalon, in the area that is now the Eastern Plaguelands. The idea is that you progress through this starting area by doing the quests the, sometimes familiar, NPCs give you. As a reward you get money, talent points and sometimes a piece of rare, blue, equipment. You also get a quest chain which rewards you with a summoned epic riding mount, the deathcharger, which works exactly like the warlock's summoned mount, the dreadsteed.

I personally completed the starting area quests in a couple of hours. At the end of the ride, you're level 57, in full blue equipment, got all your talent points appropriate for that level and with an epic ground mount. Not too shabby at all. The quests themselves are mostly the trusted old kill this many mobs of type A and collect that many items of type B. There are a couple of somewhat unique quests though that bring some variety to the old concept, although I wouldn't exactly call them revolutionary. A couple of them even got a bit tedious after a while, because of the sheer number of objectives you have to complete. But all in all an enjoyable experience, mostly because of the story and how it unfolds. A special note should go to the big finale of the whole chain, which is really well-done and I would guess of particular interest to lore fanatics.

I guess the whole area is probably best compaired to the Tortage destiny quest line of Age of Conan, and apparently I'm not the only one who got that idea. Although you don't have a private instance, you share it with the other players that have also just started a death knight.

I would say that it's definitely worth it to at least play through the death knight starting zone, even if you're not interested in leveling one up all the way to level 80, because of the well-crafted starting zone and, if you're interested in the Warcraft universe, the interesting story line.