Last week's All the World's a Stage was focused on the idea that not every character concept is appropriate to every group. The fundamental notion I was trying to convey is that each group has their own normative behaviors, themes, and characters. There's not necessarily anything fundamentally substandard about playing a vampire. Rather, many roleplay groups won't have space or stories available for someone who is playing one of the blood-sucking undead.

That being said, there was enough discussion about being a vampire that I wanted to take some time and review how you can go about exploring that character concept in the World of Warcraft. Azeroth isn't necessarily home to huge vampire organizations or angsty teens exploring puberty, but there are still plenty of opportunities to try out the ideas without breaking WoW genre.

Death Knight

Death knights are probably your best, purest option for playing something similar to a vampire character. The entire class is built from the ground up very similarly to vampires, and you can probably do about the same things as a vampire. Let's start from the top.

First, death knights are characters who have already died once. Then, forced from their final rest by Arthas, they are instantly enslaved into a totalitarian, insane society. This is to say, when death knights first come into play, they are part of Arthas's efforts to bolster Acherus. They are only freed from this insane "life" during the Battle for Light's Hope Chapel.

After that exciting opening, death knights are left to wander the world and find their own way. The Knights of the Ebon Blade are obviously focused on the eventual defeat of the Lich King. But you're still left with a character who is essentially undead, possessing significant supernatural power, and an outlook on the world entirely separate from your average character.

Death knights possess more than a few traditionally vampiric abilities. There are not only direct references like Vampiric Blood, but there are also more subtle allusions like Blood Gorged. (If you don't know other RPGs, many vampire systems like Vampire: The Masquerade posit that the more blood a vampire has in its body, the more powerful it becomes.) Powers like Army of the Dead allude to the master vampire's control over other undead.

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