Senior Designer Mike Donais and Game Designer Dean Ayala had a pretty interesting interview with IGN about the creation of the Death Knights for Knight of the Frozen Throne. I’m going to highlight some of the key bits, but check out the full interview here.
General
- They wanted to make more cards like Lord Jaraxxus for a long time.
- The decision to add 5 armor to each hero was decided on early on.
- “We initially were looking at all the hero card designs, and a lot of times, the first time that we design something on the sheet, it actually ends up staying all the way through. The numbers might change, but the general concept of the design sticks around. For the hero cards, there were zero that stayed from their original design through.”
Druid Death Knight Early Designs
Hunter Death Knight Early Designs
- “The battle cry used to be, “Summon your beasts that died this game.” It was sort of a N’Zoth for beasts. The hero power was, deal 2 damage to all enemies.”
Mage Death Knight Early Designs
- “We started early on with the Frost Lich, so we knew it would be something frosty. We knew we wanted to make something build-around, so we tried the battle cry of “your elementals in your hand, in deck and in play all get +2/+2.” “
- “We actually had it summon two Water Elementals for a while. “
Paladin Death Knight Early Designs
Priest Death Knight Early Designs
- Discussing Shadowreaper Anduin: “We play tested him a lot in Highlander, in not Highlander, in burst desks, in OTK decks, so we had a lot of information on him. His hero power changed a lot, his battle cry changed a lot. One of his early hero powers was just resurrect – summon a random friendly minion that died this game.”
- “We talked at length about Shadowform and how it interacts with Anduin for a very, very long time now. We’ve had designs in the past where we did more things around Shadowform. Something we generally don’t like to do in card design is reference other cards.”
Rogue Death Knight Early Designs
- The hero power was “discover a secret from any class.”
- This was very close to the final design of Valeera.
- “For Valeera “discover a secret from any class” is totally wild, but I think what we ended up with was so unique that it really hit what we wanted to do.”
Shaman Death Knight Early Designs
Warlock Death Knight Early Designs
- “For Gul’dan, we had the concept of Gul’dan being sort of this vampiric guy. The pictures of him were – sort of the concept of a Vampire Death Knight.”
- “It was kind of like a Molten Giant hero card that summoned demons from your deck. It was different because of that.”
Warrior Death Knight Early Designs
Hero Concept Artwork
Maybe woulda be cool to have like 2 DK versions for each class (but limiting the inclusion to 1 per deck) to allow more deck strategies.
…and in the end they aren’t balanced at all-some are auto-include OP and others are too weak to see play.
I hope they make more cards like these..their a lot of fun ..also monk and demon hunter heroes would be great along with legendary weapons and spells….they do need to increase the rate that legends come outta packs.