Tobold's Blog: Death Knight Chronicles

Monday, November 17, 2008

Death Knight Chronicles

The Wrath of the Lich King is an opportunity for plenty of new beginnings. One player, Scott Goldie, decided on a project where he plays a Death Knight and chronicles his adventures on a website called DKayed. There is not only a blog, but also a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel, and a Picase image gallery. Multimedia Death Knight chronicles, the sign of the modern age. I'm old-fashioned and stick to blogging.

I created a Tauren Death Knight, and didn't even enter the game with him. I plan to play him much later, when I've seen enough of Northrend and wouldn't mind another tour of Outlands. I only created the character now to reserve the name, Bullerich. The name is based on a German word, "bullerig", meaning sour-tempered, but in German the "ig" is often pronounced close to "ich". And of course the "bull" part is nice for a Tauren.

Apparently naming a Death Knight is a problem. I've seen lots of variations of anti-heroes of fantasy literature (Elric, Kane), often using special characters like "ä" or "é", which makes it quite difficult for other players to type those names for sending a tell or invite. And there are thousands of Death Knight called Death-something, like Deathmoo, Deathnight, and so on (I found Deathnought funny). That must be a bit annoying for those players who called their character Death-something years ago, and are now swamped by lots of other players with similar names. How did you name your Death Knight?
- posted by Tobold @ 9:28 AM Permanent Link

Comments:

I did the same as you, created a DK and did only log her on for a sec.

I named her: Persavone

the name has its roots in Greek Mythology "Persephone", who is the Goddess of the Underworld. She was kidnapped by Hades and held captive by him in the underworld.

I found this very fitting to the Deathknight story, where Arthas is at start controlling you and "pressing you in service".

i changed the name to have a "sav" in it, as all my toons have that.

# posted by

Savrukk : 17/11/08 10:37

I am a native German speaker and have never heard of the word 'Bullerich'. Wicked. :D

My DK is called Quinn, based on the song of the same title by Bob Dylan, "Quinn the Escimo".

# posted by

Max : 17/11/08 10:41

My DK is named MorphHoof. My main char is Morpheus, and I already have a female orc hunter named Morphea, so MorphHoof seemed appropriate for a Tauren DK :).

Just like you I just wanted to create the char, but got totally sucked in and played it all the way to L58 O.o.

The amount of stupidity in the local chat in the DK area knows no limits btw, so beware :).

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 10:45

I always struggle to name any of my chars and usually settle on a dreadful pun... so I went for Deafnight.

Naming chars after characters from Bob Dylan songs is a great idea :)

# posted by

sepph : 17/11/08 10:48

My Deathknight is named 'Liannah' after a (Pen&Paper) RP character of mine and so there is no obvious DK connection in the name. I most always use names from my Pen&Paper characters ..

We saw one DK that was quite funny: it was the "LateKnight"

# posted by

Yashima : 17/11/08 10:50

I called mine Dril. All of my other characters have names like -eril (replacing the - with a letter that works) and Deril was already taken, so I just took out the "e" ^^.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 11:26

I did the destiny quest chain yesterday, which is much recommended. You end at level 58, just at the right spot to hit outland. Which I intend to do much later, too.
Named her Ciath. I generally never use "speaking" names, except for one case. I just found it hilarious to sell Golden Fish Sticks with a character named "Käptniglo"...

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 11:46

I named mine Hræsvelgr, after the mythical Norse giant. The name means "Corpse Swallower".

# posted by

Lloyd V. : 17/11/08 11:53

My DK is called Hentzau, after Rupert von Hentzau, the villain in "The Prisoner of Zenda". I liked the phrase: "I neve kill anything I've kissed" when I saw the movie :)

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 12:11

I neveR kill anything I've kissed, ofc XD

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 12:12

I reserved "Psychopomp" months in advance. A psychopomp is any entity which escorts the newly-dead to their afterlife, eg: Charon, the grim reaper, shinigami, etc.. I like to help my fallen comrades to their feet to get them 45 seconds closer to their resting place.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 12:19

I had no problems with names, I just deleted my main and only level 70 and recreated him as a Death Knight. It's all a bit more meaningful in terms of the story when you really were a hero in game. Running around doing quests for all the NPCs I fought in Naxx back in vanilla was amusing.

# posted by

Arwel : 17/11/08 12:26

Raji. He was actually my old troll shaman alt. He's a romantic fool who thought that the best way to woo women was to be a good cook. Eventually, he learnt the hard way that the females were not kidding about the "through the ribcage" part of getting into a man's heart.

I plan on starting him as a tragic character and play it as it goes. Who knows what kind of a person he ends up being like..

# posted by

Unknown : 17/11/08 13:08

I avoided Death anything in my name as soon as I rolled my guy for a few of those reasons.

On another note Tobold, I strongly suggest you do the DK questline at least until you get to your new factions stronghold. It will not only be an enjoyable experience (if you haven't done it already) but just sitting on your name isn't the only thing its doing. Its also building rested, and those first 2-3 levels of your DK go so fast it would be almost wasted rested for anything you do there... Of coarse most of bonus your getting isn't going to be missed since the majority of exp you'll be getting will be quested exp.. but again it just goes so quick I'd just as soon get him to 58, drop him to an inn/major city and build your rested there then allow him to collect dust :)

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 13:35

I'm going for Kenshiro. My anime fanboy roots run deep, and being able to play a variant of the old Fist of the Northstar epic would be a lot of fun. Note!

1. Shin 'kills' Kenshiro and steals his woman. Revenge!
2. Kenshiro practices Hokuto Shin Ken, or Holy Fist of the North Star. Northrend is the northernmost continent.
3. In Japanese, the word 'ken' can mean fist (as in Kenshiro's case), or 'sword', as it would mean for my DK.
4. I get to make a macro that grumbles, 'You're already dead,' whenever he uses Death Grip!
5. Kenshiro punches things and they blow up. DKs can make Corpses explode.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 13:42

My lil female Dwarf Deathknight is called Jazzbeaux ^_^

I wanted one called Saint :p but it was taken >_<

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 13:46

this is the first character i haven't named after a character from a japanese film (shuya, ryuji, akira) or a biblical angel (forfax, balthial).
i called him Pernicious. seemed fitting, surprised it was free.

# posted by

Unknown : 17/11/08 13:53

Haemoglobin - he that likes blood. =)

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 14:00

Orthanc - one of the Two Towers in LOTR. I'm suprised I was able to get the name since I'm on one of the original servers.

# posted by

Slybri : 17/11/08 14:57

Mine is named Karnevil. I chose that because every single toon I have in WoW or WAR is based off my very first WoW toons name which is Karnak (ancient Egyptian religious city). I do this because almost every single name in any MMO gets shortened down to the first few Characters, so I end up being Karn, and I also dislike people not knowing who I am if on an alt. His particular name has the obvious evil conotation but I also chose his as a play off of the word Carnival.
So now my three highest toons are named.

hunter -70- Karnal (with a pet named Knowledge naturally)This was my first toon previously named Karnak but a server xfer precipitated the name change as someone already had it

Druid - 70 -Karnexus the Tauren main now

Death knight -55- And he won't be played for a while as I want to get my druid leveled up first.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 15:11

Dethtongue. Anyone familiar with 'Bloom County' will get that. Coincidentally, the sorta-sequel to that comic was 'Outland'.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 15:29

Necrognomic. A gnome DK... bad pun, I know but what are gnomes famous for otherwise?

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 15:54

My main is Hexx, a warlock.

My primary alt is Chantt, a priest.

My DK was either going to be Scornn or Angstt. I decided Angstt was the 'better' name.

# posted by

Marshall : 17/11/08 15:57

I basically try to pick a no so obvious name. So from the manga/anime Genshiken, my Death Knight is Ogiue. Named after the Yao fangirl.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 16:01

As DK's work with pest, sickness, and other strange ill stuff I named mine Gnorroe

# posted by

Teut : 17/11/08 16:06

Mine's named Koechei, after the Deathless.

# posted by

nachtmusik : 17/11/08 16:35

Named mine Dyssent. Seems to fit nicely.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 16:35

I managed to get Nadir as a name, which I was surprised to get. Looks good.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 17:52

I was looking through my LotR readers companion guild to try an find some nice orc name but I had stumbled upon the word Truncheon which the book stated was an old word for a broken spear. Truncheon has completed the DK quests and is currently building her Herbalism and Inscription professions. At the moment I'm jumping back and forth between doing that and have my two 70's work opposite sides of Northrend.

# posted by

Arrow : 17/11/08 17:55

One design decision that interests me about DKs is that they are far more complex than vanilla classes. Whilst that makes soloing more interesting, I wonder if the increased complexity of resource management would make tanking harder, by causing distractions that reduce situational awareness. I'm sure the best tanks would have no problem,but will it result in a worse tanking from the average player?

Has anyone here had any experience of the relative ease of tanking as a DK and one of the more traditional classes?

# posted by

Sven : 17/11/08 19:10

I have not yet tried tanking as a DK. My sense is that, yes, there will be more to watch and pay attention to, as well as a broader array of abilities to use to be effective. At this point, I'm still not sure how they will work out as main tanks, but I remain open minded about that. Of course, at this stage almost all DKs are solo/DPS specced for leveling ease, and Unholy seems to be the most popular choice for that. I expect we'll see more DKs trying to tank once a larger number of them reaches Northrend and the late 70s than is the case now. My own DK is 59, and I'm not very focused on leveling that character at the moment -- which is what I expect is the case with a lot of DK players.

# posted by

knightblaster : 17/11/08 19:20

I went for Doomsheep :D And belf, cause as much as I hate them, they look best ^^

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 19:45

Tobold, you said that you haven't even entered the game yet with your deathknight -- if that's the case, I suggest you log into the character for a second (as another poster mentioned) and log out. I reserved a name with a deathknight but didn't log in at all until yesterday and found I had NO double-xp saved. After the opening cutscene, your character appears in a double-xp zone so I've since logged in and logged right back out to get the xp cranking.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 22:34

Schuldiner...after the late Death guitarist/founder, Chuck Schuldiner...undead, of course

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 23:12

Blightsaber...works on so many levels :D

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 23:25

My husband named his Sugeknight... ode to the rapper.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/11/08 02:29

Went for Cpthammer. Really my only motivation to do so was because I had recently watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and Badhorse was taken.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/11/08 04:57

Named mine Zairn. I generally pick my names off of whatever sounds nice and pops into my head first. No real deeper meaning, guess that isn't very creative.

# posted by

Sine Nomine : 18/11/08 05:00

Mine is named Uhtred after a badass viking age guy from a novel by Bernard Cornwell.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/11/08 11:41

Turncoat.

It fits well with the storyline background and also works great in quest dialogues.

Now, when are we going to see some amusing Death Knight exclusive guild names?

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/11/08 17:07

Sacrificed my level 38 warlock, Ourorboros, that I was never going to level. I don't RP, but he has the same race/face/hairstyle of the now-departed 'lock.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/11/08 18:42

I have seen so many Darkthis and Deaththat's since WotLK came out, that when I get around to it I think I'll take a female gnome deathknight and name her something like "Perkygoth" or "Pippilongstocking" or something else painfully cute. Honestly, I've never seen so many guys in black armor riding around in my life

# posted by

Anonymous : 19/11/08 00:09

I named my DK Bedwyn, it's Welsh for birch tree. The meaning of the birch tree in celtic/druid tree lore is: renewal/initiation so I thought it fit well. Of course I also have a paladin who's name is Achaius (Irish/Gaelic meaning horseman)...what name is better for a paly? :) Both are on Destromath (horde)

# posted by

Anonymous : 19/11/08 06:18

Doughal, Celtic for dark stranger.

# posted by

Anonymous : 19/11/08 23:32

Sellidrak. That's Kardilles spelled backwards. And that's my internet name since ... well since i've discovered what the internet was. PLus , drac in my language means devil/demon , and it's kind of fitting.

# posted by

Anonymous : 23/11/08 15:39