Why start at level 55?

[:1]I will finally be hitting level 55 tonight (or at least I hope so) and I will be rolling a DK as soon as the ding is done, but I can't help but wonder why the class starts at level 55. Why can't I start every toon at level 55 once I get one to that level? Has an actual reason been given for this? I am not complaining or trolling...I just want to know. If it was intended to be an unlock for lich king content they could have just make a player get to level 55 and then be able to start a Death Knight at level 1. I've done my research and I have a feeling I am really going to like the DK class and I am thinking I might feel cheated that I am losing out of 54 levels of play time to learn the class and the fun and tribulations that come with that. (And why level 55? Why not 40? or 60?)

Did the devs just not want to make low level abilities for the class? It just doesn't make sense to me. The lore is that they are escaped Lich King servants, but I don't see why that makes them start at a higher level. Even if they are supposed to be former experienced warriors. If I was a .NET Web Engineer for 20 years I would still start out as a newb who might know a few basics if I transfered to another field.

On a side note...these are the first forums I've been to that I don't see an obvious search function. Is the armory search supposed to bring up forum posts as well? (I suppose I should have tried that, but didn't think of that till now) Though I suppose they may have figured it a waste of time to put that function in as I know I am one of the few people out there that actually use it. I want to believe this has been asked before, so I am sorry for putting up again.
you'll find you don't actually start at 55.

while this is technically true, by the time you get all of your abilities/equipment and finish the death knight starter quests and are ready to get into the non-dk specific content you will be level 58-60. the first few levels as a DK are handed to you in short order through a very fun and fast paced quest line.

i assume they wanted you to move directly to outland and that is why 55 and not 40 or 32 or 27 or 74.

Hero Class? As in the Heroes from the RTS Warcraft 3? There were other classes that were heroes as well. Or is that some other term particular to World of Warcraft that I not familar with yet?

And why should the DKs move right to the outlands content? Why is this one class special in that regard? I personally can see some validity to the arguement that a character should just start out at max level since in these kinds of MMOs hitting the level cap is when the real game begins, but I also see why that is not a good idea in terms of the stability of the game (new players to the game would log into a ghost town...and we already do on a lot of servers). So why do it with one class? I probably will have my answer once I start playing one or at least I hope so.

And yeah...the search funtion is built into the Armory search ( I am at work and thus using IE7 so the search box was covered by the warning box about an old browser.
Because thats the way Blizz wants it. 'Nuff said.
If I remember properly, back when the DK class was announced it was stated that you'd have to have a top-level toon, then "sacrifice" it so you'd become a DK. Then the level req was lowered to 55, then they figured no sacrifice was needed.

If I may, and this is only speculation. The reason DKs started at 55 and go straight into outlands was because a new xpac, and a whole new zone was coming along. Some of the old players that had ha Gazillion toons at 70 might not be leaning towards trying a DK because of all the Azerothisboringtolevel.

Why wasn't something along these lines included for goblins and worgen? Cause cata changed a lot of azeroth and quests/zones feel fresh and new (I only have 4 80's and didnt feel like leveling a new toon cause basically I knew all the quests). I'm tempted to level a new alt from 1 with all the new quests and what not.

-Again only speculation, but that answer works for me. :)
It was supposed to be a "hero class" because it wasn't supposed to be "balanced." It started out as an intentionally unbalanced class. I remember when blood presence was blood aura... and it stacked with all the other DKs in the raid. We'd do a BG and heal for like 30% of the damage we'd do... then when we eventually did die, we'd automatically raise as a ghoul. I believe the intention was to eventually have a new hero class for each new expansion after WotLK... but people wined that it wasn't balanced, and DKs were brought down to a balanced level with everything and are essentially pretty much identical in strength and role as a warrior. 'cept they get special mounts.

Since people rejected the idea of "hero classes" in the first place, blizzard said no more and don't seem to have any intention of making any new classes at all...

I'd much rather see a new class (or... two?) than any more new races... but alas. That makes balance difficult.

If there were a new (hero or not) class... what sort of class would you guys look for? Dragon knight might be interesting... Centered around polymorphing into dragon forms... instead of DK presences, they could take on the aspect of different flights to perform different roles. Could be interesting.

Or Brewmasters (pandaran NPCs, but not as a playable race)... would be a superior Buff/debuffer, even if it's not too strong themselves. Would suck to solo, but be invaluable in raids.
A hero class isnt anything that's supposed to be better then other classes its just the name they picked for a class that you character "morphs" into. Usually how it would work is if you were a specific class at a certain lvl you could become specialized and take a hero class but because of the way WoW works changing classes at higher levels becomes next to impossible so they just made it so that you can create a new character as that class.

The reason that DKs were so overpowered when they first came out is because it takes thousands of people playing for hundreds of hours each to show what works and what doesn't work (I still miss the DWR summoning another Army). When people talk about dk being op because they are the "hero" class just never played way back in vanilla when entire specs of classes were no good for anything because blizzard was still working on developing the game and getting feedback and forming ideas on how to make certain specs playable without making them the "One class to rule them all" (warlocks right before wrath).