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Know Your Lore: Goblins and the Bilgewater Cartel
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Crafty, cunning, ambitious and sometimes completely insane, the goblin race was first introduced to Warcraft players back in Warcraft II as an ally for the Horde. Sometime between Warcraft II and World of Warcraft, the goblins made an about-face and declared themselves completely neutral, siding with neither side in the ongoing Alliance/Horde conflict. With the announcement of Cataclysm's release and the inclusion of goblins as the new Horde race, one of the questions that has consistently popped up time and time again is why a supposedly neutral race would choose to break that stance and ally with one side over another? It's a good question. Why would a race suddenly rescind on an agreement that by all appearances seems to be profitable? For that matter, why are the goblins so obsessed with profit, anyway? The goblins of Warcraft have a history that goes back much farther than any player simply paying a visit to Booty Bay realizes, and that history has a lot to say about why the goblins are the way they are -- ruthless little mercenaries constantly on the lookout for an easy way to make some gold. Please note: The following post contains all kinds of spoilers for the Kezan and Lost Isles portions of the Cataclysm expansion, as well as The Shattering by Christie Golden. If you wish to remain unspoiled, turn back, before it's too late!
Know Your Lore: The origin of goblin and worgen death knights
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Most of Cataclysm seems solid from a story standpoint, but a few plot holes continue to pop up here and there that cause people to wonder exactly how certain elements and creatures fit into lore. One question that seems to come up more often than anything else is the origin of goblin and worgen death knights. After all, these guys didn't even exist during Wrath of the Lich King -- the Greymane Wall isn't coming down until Cataclysm hits, and the Bilgewater Cartel goblins are still on Kezan, right? Well, not quite. In order to understand where these guys come from -- and they do fit in lore, Blizzard managed to integrate them quite nicely -- we have to take a look at one of the continual banes of my existence: timelines. The timeline for World of Warcraft was pretty straightforward during vanilla and The Burning Crusade. However, with the introduction of the death knight class in Wrath, players were introduced to a much heavier use of phased content, including a phased version of the death knight starting zone that introduced the reason why these servants of Arthas suddenly turned on him and formed their own independent alliances with either the Alliance or the Horde. WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. If you wish to remain spoiler-free, do not continue.
Goblin cinematic: Escape from Kezan
Xfire user Zilas just uploaded what we believe to be the cinematic detailing the end of the goblin starting zone Kezan. Frankly, it's amazing. There are spoilers for the end of the first part of the goblin starting experience, so be warned. Blizzard has, once again, topped itself in terms of cinematic quality and expression outside of its general pre-rendered cinematics. Hopefully the worgen transformation movie is just as awesome.
All the World's a Stage: Starting roleplay as a goblin in Cataclysm
The nice thing about roleplaying in Cataclysm is that the starting experiences for goblin and worgen really guide you to the roleplay. This week, we're going to be focused on the dozen or so character hooks presented in the goblin starting area. and next week we'll examine the worgen starting area. Obviously, since this information is based on the beta, things could change at any time. Additionally, if you don't want spoilers, you might want to skip this article. Lastly, this is based on a surface reading of the events in the starting area. Later lore will lead to different interpretations of events, I'm sure. You begin life as a goblin searching out your own fame and fortune. You've recently been granted a promotion in the Bilgewater Cartel, and now work with an executive assistant named Sassy Hardwrench. There's even a pair of hardbodied "assistants" who're eager to help out named Candy Cane and Chip Endale. Considering how Candy and Chip are dressed, though, I suspect they're mostly lingering around as decoration. With three characters inimately involved with your character from the word "go," your goblin will have dozens of valuable conflicts available for regular roleplay. What was your experience with Sassy really like? (Obviously, there's as in-game answer to that question, but you should take liberties to represent your unique character.) Were you a bigger fan of Candy or Chip? We can presume the average goblin at your middle-management level all have similar assistants, so it's not like you're building a Mary Sue empire by writing out your own tea of assistants.
The Queue: Goblins and worgen
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Whoa, Cataclysm questions that we might be able to answer? No way! I'm in shock. Truly. Look at the shock on my face. Do you see it? Yeah, pretty sweet, I know. Babaloo asked: "Will places like Gilneas be available to other races in Cataclysm, also, will they function as towns and stuff or for one time, one race staging zones? I'm really worried because it seems like they could've done a lot for those."
Cataclysm starting zone lore and other new details revealed
PC Gamer UK was lucky enough to get the chance to grill Blizzard about the upcoming Cataclsym expansion, and they came away with quite a bit of new information, which is available in their latest issue, as well as as in the PC Gamer Podcast.If you don't want to be spoiled, do not follow the break, I'm warning you now. There's a couple major story spoilers, especially regarding the origins of the goblins and worgen.
Mystery continent spotted
Sharp-eyed tipster Fontane sent us this very interesting screenshot today. This is a picture of a book open on the table by the Argent Dawn emmisaries currently set up in Shattrath. What does that look like in the circled area? To me, it looks like a map of Azeroth: Northrend at the top, Kalimdor at left, Eastern Kingdoms at right, and the Maelstrom in the middle. But what's that at the bottom? Could it be a new continent? Sure, it might be a bit early to speculate about the third expansion, given that the second isn't even out yet (five days!). But I'm going to do it anyway; we do know they've got more planned.
Adding to the Azeroth map
Currently our map of Azeroth has two continents, but anyone who's played the original RTS games knows more is out there. Blizzplanet has some interesting information that leads me to hazard a guess that we may be seeing more added to the cartography of Azeroth in the future. They start with the information, lore and such that were added to the World of Warcraft RPG: Lands of Mystery tabletop rulebook. Should you own a copy (I, alas, do not) you will find it contains new info on Northrend and the South Seas. The maps that we saw on the WoW Collector's Edition behind the scenes DVD of Azeroth show that they have been planning such an expansion since 2004. On the map, it shows Northrend at the top of the world, with the Maelstrom and Nazajatar in the middle and the Isle of Kezen/Undermine at the bottom.
