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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!
Countdown to Cataclysm: Why go goblin?
This article is part of our Countdown to Cataclysm series, preparing you for Cataclysm launch one day at a time. Deathwing's return and the subsequent shattering of the world have driven the Bilgewater Cartel goblins of Kezan into the embrace of the Horde. With Cataclysm quickly approaching and goblins finally becoming a playable race in World of Warcraft, you're going to need all the goblin knowledge you can before rolling up one of these clever characters.
The Queue: Theme song
Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley will be your host today. Hello, WoW Insider community. I'm sure you've heard of me -- I'm Mathew, one of the co-hosts of the WoW Insider Show, probably the best WoW podcast ever*. Our show is pretty great! However, we are desperately lacking one very crucial component: a theme song. We need a theme song. So, community, I beg and beseech you, help us come up with a theme song for our awesome podcast. Suggest something, record something, give us ideas, anything. We want to hear your input! I have personally added my selection to the top of The Queue, as I believe punk/heavy metal versions of Ke$ha songs will more than likely bring us the listenership we deserve. * Source: My mother. Everyone on the planet asked: How can we contribute ideas for the WoW Insider Show theme song? Great question, everyone. Here are the ways to help us out: Comment in this thread Send an email to theshow@wow.com with the subject "Theme song" Tell us on Twitter by following @wowinsidershow
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.
Azshara: Changes and what will be missed
The Cataclysm beta is at times a little off putting. Flying over zones is an alien experience that is still somewhat strangely familiar. There aren't really words to describe the disconnect you feel -- it's got something to do with the newness of the old zones. Suddenly that place that had been a lake for the past five, six years is gone. Suddenly entire rock faces have vanished. And in the case of Azshara, suddenly large parts of the landscape have taken a dive into the ocean. For Alliance players, Azshara wasn't really much of a zone to begin with -- there are a few quests at Talrendis Point in Azshara, a few more neutral quests here and there, and of course the level 50 class quests and the quests for the Hydraxian Waterlords -- other than these however, Azshara was simply a mystery. At Talrendis Point both Alliance and Horde players can find an NPC named Loh'atu, a tauren who will give quests to either faction. He'll also tell you a little bit about the history of the area, but doesn't really go into great detail. And that's always been the major problem with Azshara -- there wasn't really anything of significance to be found there, generally speaking. Unlike Felwood, Feralas, Tanaris, Un'goro or any of the other Kalimdor zones in vanilla WoW, Azshara seemed to be a zone that consisted of large amounts of land that you had to run over and mobs you had to dodge to get to the one place that had the one item for the one quest you needed to complete. Everything else? It could be ignored. And so it was -- most players tended to skip the zone entirely after Burning Crusade's launch. There are, however, small bits and pieces of lore and quest lines that shouldn't be missed, quests that will be disappearing entirely when Cataclysm hits. Check out the gallery below for a look at Azshara as it stands today -- the list of quests, and the reasons why you should do these quests now, start after the break. %Gallery-97278%
Submarines coming in Cataclysm
While we didn't get the full fledged Maelstrom expansion that some people were predicting, Cataclysm still promises to have some water-related content, such as the Abyssal Maw, the elemental plane of water. And where there's water, you need a boat. The recent Twitter developer chat revealed that we will, in fact, be using new transports to get to certain places in Cataclysm, and that these transport would be submarines, built by the gnomes and goblins for their respective factions.
Deconstructing the Cataclysm trailer
It's been a couple weeks since Cataclysm was announced at BlizzCon. We've had plenty of time to ruminate and discuss, to fantasize and theorize. WoW's third expansion is ripe with promise and expansion, both for the Old World of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor but also in terms of lore. We've got new races to look forward to, new zones and, most importantly, the obliteration ofwhat we know as Azeroth. Indeed this expansion heralds a brave new world with new dangers and a new foe, in the form of the former Dragon Aspect, Deathwing.We've broken apart the trailer into individual scenes, and we'll going to take a look at the most important moments -- from the opening where we're fighting in Northrend to the big reveal of Deathwing at the end. We are also going to ask those all important questions like "Who exactly is narrating the trailer" and "Why are we still fighting Arthas, where's our end-of-expansion break?". Don't forget, if you need to refresh your memory or relive the experience, you can also check out the trailer for yourself.%Gallery-71229% World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgen to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Cataclysm Worgen and Goblin starter zone maps
The great thing about playable demos are the tidbits of info and sneaky souls with cameras snapping things they shouldn't be snapping. Such was the case in the press room at BlizzCon this year, where cameras were prohibited from pointing their lenses towards computer screnes. However, it appears that Spanish fansite WoW Todo got around the floating press room attendants somehow, and posted maps of the new starting zones for Goblins and Worgens. Both of the maps have a couple of unique touches. For example, both have images of their inhabitants on it. The Lost Isles map has a particularly ugly female Goblin in a bikini while Gilneas features a human in Victorian garb. The latter also has a couple of shredded bits as if a Worgen adventurer had used his or her claws when trying to read the map. The Goblin map features a scattering of indented gold coins at the corners, as if to hold it open. Both are awesome little touches that add that special bit of pizazz to the new zones. But the maps do give us a proper glance at what we can expect from the two zones. Gilneas is dominated by Greymane Manor and the town of Duskhaven. Looking at it, I was expecting something a bit larger, but then you remember it is a starter zone. The Lost Isles is smaller still with an Alliance encampment to the North and an Orc settlement to the south, which explains their presence in the trailer.We should note that the Gilneas map is only part of the Worgen starting zone. The city and the Greymane wall are due East of what's presented.Check out the Goblin map and Worgen map over on WoW Todo. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
The WoW tourist's guide to important Cataclysm locations
It was a hectic two days at this year's BlizzCon with lots of revelations, some good, others awesome. Destruction is coming to Azeroth with the return of Deathwing, changing the face of the planet forever. While we won't see the game until 2010, the world will change entirely and cities will be revamped in order to enable them to be made flyable. However, there are several very important locations currently in-game (for the most part) which are going to be very important to the coming Cataclysm.Check out our gallery below as we take you on a guided tour of some of the important places you should probably visit right now before they are changed forever.%Gallery-70763%
Arcane Brilliance: What Cataclysm will mean to Mages, part 1
Welcome to another installment of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that serves up piping hot Mage content, with a steaming side of inappropriate humor, a light sprinkling of random 80's pop culture references, and just a dash of incompetent attempts at math. Speaking of math, last week was awesome, guys. I was apparently so wrong it took 111 comments for you to decide exactly why and how stupid I am. The effort and the display of raw number-mastery you guys displayed made me proud to be one of you. You guys make me feel like the dumbest kid in class, being forced to do math problems at the chalkboard in front of everybody, and I couldn't be happier about it. So, like many of you, I've been stuck here at home for the duration of BlizzCon. My day-job (what I like to refer to as my "what I do when I'm not being a Mage") has kept me here in sunny Las Vegas instead of in sunny Anaheim, and so I find myself at my computer, dividing my time between writing this column and furiously hitting the refresh button on my browser, hanging on every word my co-bloggers serve up from the convention floor. I wish I'd been able to make the reader meet-up this year, but that was not meant to be. I wanted to meet all of you, stammer like a dork while trying to say hello to Felica Day, and possibly get jumped by a gang of angry Warlocks while I screamed "Ice Block! Ice Block! Iiiiiice Bllloooccckkk!" at the top of my lungs. I will be there next year, with my level 85 Goblin Mage in tow, even if it kills me. I'm really having difficulty processing all of the information out there, and the vast, universal, and sweeping impact it will have on everything about this virtual world we play in, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Guild leveling? Mastery system? Southshore... taken by the Horde? My mind is leaking from my ears. I'm not even kidding; it's gross. But the purposes of today's column will be to try and make some preliminary sense of this massive glut of newness, and apply it to the only class I care about: Mages. What will the new (old?) content mean for those of us who wander the current, relatively un-sundered Azeroth, conjuring portals and pastries? Read on for my initial impressions.
Breakfast Topic: What do you think of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm?
They taunted, they teased, they insinuated and then, just as the ceremony was about to end, Chris Metzen finally dropped the bombshell and announced World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Yeah we knew it was coming, we were -- to misquote Illidan -- prepared. Now, in the aftermath, we've had time to ruminate and digest all the information: Deathwing, the raised level cap, the guild leveling, heroic versions of Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines, a new secondary profession in the form of Archeology, two new races and seven new zones, a new (and broken) Azeroth and the ability to fly in the old world. Phew, that's a lot to digest. Even more information seems to be dripping out in panels and post-opening ceremony interviews.So readers, we want to know what you think of Cataclysm. Are you pleased? Which bit excited you the most? Is it the new races or the promise of facing another insane Dragon Aspect? Are you scared by the drastic and irreversible changes that will befall Azeroth? Were you hoping for the Emerald Dream or a fully Maelstrom-centric expansion and feel like the Lost Isles and Vashj'ir are half measures? Tell us in the usual manner by dropping your thoughts and meditations in the comment box below. BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!
Cataclysm races leaked
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Cataclysm_races_leaked'; WoW.com has learned through multiple sources close to the situation some details on the next expansion, to be called World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.As we're getting into the season of news and information, all major leaks and spoilers will be happening after the break. If you don't want your surprises ruined for you, don't read this post. If you want to know, click after the break and enjoy. This policy worked well for us during the testing phase of Wrath of the Lich King and we're pleased to continue it now.After the break, the new playable races of Cataclysm.
