Sounds like some kind of ill-conceived title for a new Pixar/ Dreamworks project doesn’t it.  Coming this summer, a man that thinks it’s a wolf beats the living shit out of a green midget – hell I’d pay to see that.

But seriously, I for one actually paid for and watched the Blizzcon live stream last month (and yes I am slightly peeved by the fact that everyone else watched it via xfire or some shit for free) and there were a few things I took away from that event:

1. Cataclysm actually looks cool, and not like the picture painted in my mind by MMO-Champion a few weeks before which more resembled a steaming pile of goblin faeces.  And yes that is how you spell faeces you illiterate Americans.
2. Give rated BGs, seriously give.  Although I’m slightly apprehensive on this one still, mainly because when BC was announced I distinctly remember being quite excited that they were introducing arena.  And yeah arena was kind of fun in season1, but the fun wore off pretty quickly once people realised the whole system was 95% comp, 3% latency and 2% skill.  So I guess I would say I have guarded anticipation for this feature based on past experience.
3. Stat panel was the best by far, no doubt here – the panel was both informative and funny and had some of the best news possible in terms of removing stuff.  Although slightly disappointed that they didn’t announce: “Resilience, it’s GONE“. That really would have been the icing on the cake, but it wasn’t to be.  The news that spellpower would be completely replaced by int is a reasonably interesting one from a druid perspective.  However there’s really no point speculating over those changes right now for two main reasons – firstly that it wont be happening for around another year yet, and secondly because no one can predict what the resto druid will be like at level 85 so there is no point crying “but we don’t like int” yet.
4. I want a newb.
5. Worgen beats the shit out of Goblin.

Do not want

So allow me to elaborate on #5, the main problem here is twofold from my perspective.  Worgen can be druids, and goblins suck arse.  Now this is not to say I won’t be levelling a goblin just for the coolness factor once cata comes out, however I’d prefer to be levelling a Worgen – hell I could probably even be persuaded to reroll my druid to Worgen as I’m sure a lot of Nelfs will be considering right now.  The main thing that sold it for me was the transformation animation – Jesus fuck that’s cool, far too cool for a bunch of dwarf loving gnome herders, that is clearly a horde race there.

Let me preface this accusation here with some background.

As far back as WotLK launch people were already pretty sure that Goblin would be the race in the next expansion, in fact a lot of clever people were even predicting the worgen and goblin as far back as pre-WotLK launch.  And it made sense, my personally held belief at the time was that Goblins would be the only race introduced and would start off neutral and allow players to ‘pick’ a side between horde and alliance. I’d even gone as far as to think of a plausable storyline for the whole thing.  Along the lines of you are a mercenary who needs money for something like your whorish goblin mother needing a hip replacement due to an unfortunate Tauren related incident.  Very sad story, mother can’t even look at a beef steak without having a panic attack.

So fucking win

So you join the Horde/Alliance in order to pay for her operation and subsequent post traumatic stress therapy.  The quest line could end around level 80 or 85 by reaching your monetary goal, but coming to the realisation that you no longer want to leave your new found faction due to gaining too many friends/agreeing with their policies/having knocked up some Dwarf chick.

The whole thing could have been implemented much in the same way as the DK start area where you start as scourge. Only may be a bit cooler so you could actually see and talk to ‘alliance player goblins’ before the faction choice while you all remain neutral (this is how the DK area should have been done too….).

So then MMO-Champion discovered the new Halloween masks and predicted Goblin and Worgen races in the next expansion.  Well my idea of both being neutral could still work, both races are decidedly neutral in the lore so it would still fit without too much ret-conning.  In fact arguably there’s a lot more ret-conning needed to have Goblins being horde-only than there is to keep both races neutral but allow faction picking for monetary reasons.  I didn’t really ever work out the reason that Worgens would have to choose between factions, perhaps both faction recruitment officers stand facing each other 10 yards apart holding doggy-treats while the Worgen is in the middle, and they both shout “here boy, come to the one you love!“.

But alas, as we now know both races will be fixed sides, which like I was saying earlier, pisses me off a bit.  I mean Worgen get some kickarse haunted-house-esque start zone and have you seen the transformation animation?

So yeah, I want that shit.  I know the druids amongst you are thinking “why do you care if you can transform, you spend all your time in tree form anyway”.  Yeah, true – but Ghostcrawler has already hinted at the possible removal of tree form and if that happens Worgen form is so fucking win.  The rest of you are thinking, what about the Goblin’s awesome racials?  Yes, a 20 yard jump forward and small-damage turret thing are kind of cool – but you just know that they’re going to be nerfed into the ground starting a few months after release and ending never (like Deathknights), so I don’t really see them lasting at all in the long term.