Blizzard's Original Ideas for Hearthstone's Death Knights with Mike Donais & Dean Ayala
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to talk with Mike Donais and Dean Ayala about Hearthstone's Death Knights. They brought along several early concepts of what Death Knight cards could have been and some in-dev artwork. See our recap of the interview below, along with plenty of awesome concepts.
The only Death Knight info in the following section is information not present on the cards towards the end of this post.
- Lord Jaraxxus is one of their favourite cards. For a long time they wanted to make more cards like him.
- They didn't like the weird interactions with Lord Jaraxxus, so they needed to design a new card type to keep it a clean experience.
- Early on they decided to not change your health total and to give you armor to help make them more playable.
- Sometimes cards don't change much from their early design other than numbers. This was not the case with Death Knights - they all changed.
- An early Valeera the Hollow hero power "Discovered a secret from any class".
- An early Deathstalker Rexxar hero power was "Deal 2 damage to all enemies".
- Zombeasts originally were able to get minions from any class. "Getting some of the warrior taunts was just a bit too weird".
- Deathstalker Rexxar had a Battlecry that was to craft and summon a Zombeast.
- They like how Bloodreaver Gul'dan will grow in strength over time as more Demons are added to the game.
- An early hero power from Shadowreaper Anduin saw him resurrect a random friendly minion that died during the game.
- Shadowform working with Shadowreaper Anduin was a consideration.
- Originally, Frost Lich Jaina gave your Elementals in-deck, on the field, and in your hand +2/+2.
- "It was a bit weird, because sometimes you would summon elementals later and they wouldn't get the +2/+2"
- Another version of Frost Lich Jaina saw her summoning 2 Water Elemental.
- An early hero power from Frost Lich Jaina saw scaling based on killing minions. Each time it killed a minion, it would gain an extra damage. It did not summon the Water Elemental.
Hero Concept Artwork
A few pieces of concept artwork were provided for Death Knights.
Death Knight Card Design Concepts
Sixteen early concepts of Hearthstone's Death Knights can be found below. This was before they had their special hero card backgrounds.
At the beginning of KOTF I thought, that Scourgelord Garrosh will be used in some tempo decks (as it used to be in the early days of the expansion) and in some combo decks (we are yet to see him there). But ppl were creative and made fatigue warrior, other versions of control... and God knows what more is about to come. The almighty taunt quest can't be compared to the possibilities of the warr DK.
Praying that shaman gets voodoo stuff. I think that would be a cool theme :)
I would give all my money if they put "Garrosh, Weaponguy" in game! Imagine summoning him and he screams "I.LOVE.WEAPONS!" and every emote becomes him speaking about his weapons. "Heh, Greetings."? More like "Do you want to see my War Axe?" !!! "Well played."? More like "You are good.. BUT NOT AS GOOD AS MY WEAPONS!!" etc..
thats a great idea and would be super funny. ;)
Well the DK counts as Shadowform so any future synergy will work with both
It's very interesting seeing some of the initial ideas for death knights and understanding the thought process behind the cards we finally got.Also I am actually really happy with what death knights ended up being!Although some are more powerful than others I think all of them are fun to play and they really add something to every class' personality!
difference in power levels is always going to be a thing, especially with cards so vastly different from each other. I do agree tho that tehy hit teh nail on the head with the designs.
thrall voodoo master is Ner'zhul, the first lich king smh
Uther, Death Reaper: destroy all enemy minions and gain up to 21 health at the price of 5 mana?
How could they ever have thought that something like this would have been balanced? lol
they didn't, that's why it wasn't printed. People always give Blizzard shit for notthinking their decisions through and jsut throwing stuff at us wiwthout testing it.
THIS is waht would really happen if they did that.
I don't really get what you're saying, if you're blaming Blizzard or the players.
Anyway, what I was trying to say is that the card I complained about is so broken that is not even worth to be considered a concept.
turns out health as a ressource doesn't really work if you don't have reliable healing, which is still a major problem in warlock
It's a cool mechanic but I'm afraid people will just abuse it for OP OTK
"An early Deathstalker Rexxar hero power was "Deal 2 damage to all enemies"."
I mean holy shit that would have been the best hero power hunter could have ever got lol.
Probably?!
me go face but me also trade? *mind blown*
That should have been the Rexxar power IMO. It would have given some real credibility to control hunter. Not that the zombeast mechanic is all together bad it's just doesn't swing as hard as the good DK cards do.