I decided to join the army of deep red wannabes in Ebon Hold for my first steps in Wrath. I’ll keep it relatively short and spoiler free. The backstory is well done, the build-up of the DK’s first three levels too. If you haven’t done so already, here’s one warning though: At some stage, you will gain the quest The Light of Dawn. At the top of the screen, you should have a yellow indicator indicating the equilibrium of forces between two factions, and below, potentially, a countdown.
If there’s no countdown showing on the third line, stay put at Browman’s Mill. There’s an event in progress, which holds a key piece of storytelling, and when I mean key, it really holds the story together. Go make yourself a cup of tea or something, the event will reset about every 10 minutes. Getting in there in the middle will make you want to stick around for the next round anyway, but unlike other story pieces, once you’ve stumbled upon the end, you will only get the audio afterwards… which can be mixed in with emotes from other players and whatnot.
So how does the heroic class handle? That is a bit more difficult to answer. The class is definitely powerful, but it is also complex to take stock of. If you haven’t tried it, it handles a bit like a rogue on slow-motion where all combo points aren’t always useable. By design, you’ll be alternating between several abilities all the time, about 5 per rotation (though most of the stuff will be dead before you finish a rotation anyway. Yay for training dummies).
The fact that it’s not a 1 or 2 button spamming class is definitely nice. On the other hand, you’re mostly always doing the same things in the same order, so it’s also a bit of a faceroller – you just have to roll from left to right 
When going to bed, the DK was level 59 and about 500 rep off friendly with Argent Dawn, and still plenty o’ quests left to do in EPL. I’ve tried out unholy so far, and will probably respec to blood for a comparison at 60, but the undead just roll over and die before me. There’s a bunch of elite abomination wandering about in Andhoral, with about 11k health, and they were no problem at all either. Compared to the endless fight those represented on my then prot pallie, it’s certainly a very welcome change.
Will I stick to the class in the long run? I have no idea. I’ll most certainly be riding around in HFP over the weekend and then decide.
In terms of server load, Blizzard was on top of their game on our cluster. There was no visible performance hit in Ebon Hold at all, despite the starter part being packed full with other wannabe death knights. The other thing which is very well done is using the phase technology to make the area evolve over time (which also trickles down the population and avoids brand new level 55 DKs in starter greens with only 3 abilities to have to constantly dodge duelling challenges by the level 57s in full blues with all of their availabilities ready. These two populations play in different story times and simply don’t mix.
In terms of races, in the end I went for looks first and picked a male orc. The just look badass in the dark plate set, although as is often the case, with the blue set you have at the end of the DK intro storyline, I tend to believe that shrugging with these on would probably squish the Death Knight’s brain neatly between shoulder pads.
Finally, one thing which I realized this morning which would definitely add to the heroic dimension of the class, Blizzard shouldn’t have stopped with just the introduction quest series, but added a new series of story-driven quests every 10 levels to renew the Ebon Hold story line and, possibly, refresh the gear set with an upgraded kit with again matching looks and colours. That would definitely have added to the epic feeling of the class.
And that’s it for a first evening in Wrath. I’ll probably move the pallie to Northrend over the weekend to test the temperatures there. Got some righteous arse-kicking to do after all this defiling.
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I wonder how different it will be, in general, as a returning player after a break. Lot to relearn after WoTLK and the patch?
Nah. To my awareness, the only class which has had a relatively important adjustment of gameplay is the pallie. But you know that already, you were still around when patch 3.0.2 hit. No revolutions since then.