New Beginnings in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
How Goblins, Worgen and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will change the game.
8/31/2009 9:10 AM | 14 Comments | Page 1 of 2
The first thing I tell people new to
World of Warcraft is to roll either Blood Elf or Draenei. Those races were the first two to be added to Blizzard's massive game, some three years after it launched. And in those years the guys and gals in Irvine have learned a hell of a lot about making virtual worlds that are fun to explore, quests that skirt the grind and experiences that instill a sense of adventure. You can see it as you survive a Draenei shipwreck on Azuremyst Isle or survey Scourge-scarred lands spilling out below Silvermoon. These two starting areas make the homes of the Dwarves, Tauren and Night Elves -- virtually unchanged since launch in 2005 -- feel old and busted.
Which way to the furry convention?
That's all changing when Deathwing comes home to roost.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will transform the world of Azeroth as we know it. When the aforementioned Earth-Warder escapes his prison in Deepholm and punctures a hole between the Elemental Plane and Azeroth, he'll unleash destruction that transforms the world. And Blizzard will take the opportunity of this turmoil to drastically change the quest flow for every race in Azeroth.
If you're not a dyed-in-the-wool
World of Warcraft player and have been patient enough to hang through a couple paragraphs full of jargon and silly proper nouns, I'll spell it out for you in plain English. Sometime in the near future,
World of Warcraft is going to change significantly. Soup to nuts. That's a big deal, because there's a lot of dusty space between the fresh Blood Elf and Draenei content I talked about before and all the nifty high-level stuff beyond the Dark Portal in
The Burning Crusade and across the Northern seas in
Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard is, literally, changing its game.
But what we saw at BlizzCon this year gave us very little clue as to how
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will change the places we're familiar with. Rather, we saw the beginnings of two new playable races -- the Goblins and the Worgen.
Time
is money, friend. These goblins look like they're about to mug you for all the time you've got.
A little background: Goblins, traditionally, have taken a neutral role in
World of Warcraft. Squat, green and a little grotesque, these creatures are mostly mercenaries and merchants -- members of cartels who run airships, oversee cross-faction auctions, and (on occasion) take up arms if the money is right. If there's a dime to be made, Goblins are there. That means they can be found across Azeroth's two continents. In role-playing parlance, they're NPCs (non-player-characters), robots who sell goods or hand out quests.
The Worgen, on the other hand, aren't quite so ubiquitous. Ensconced in the gloomy forests of Silverpine, Ashenvale and later discovered lurking in the wooded Grizzly Hills of Northrend, these wolf-men have always been thought to be irredeemably evil. They're just one of a jillion creatures to be slain in Azeroth, enemies who attack the weak on sight.
From a lore perspective, it's going to be interesting to see how Blizzard nudges these races from their current alignments into either the Alliance of the Horde. The demos at BlizzCon gave a few hints as to how that will happen. Goblins, neutral in not so much a Swiss, but a Ferenghi kind of way, find themselves shipwrecked on the Lost Isles -- a sunny, colorful paradise gone awry. Here among the cliffs, caves and man-eating jungles, players will find themselves caught in the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. Something will happen in those early levels that will force players to see the Horde side of things. And I imagine that something will have to be fairly dramatic, considering the financial hit this particular Goblin cartel will take once it swears off indifference and takes up the Horde cause.
