A couple months ago images were found in the World of Warcraft MPQ files with suspiciously new masks for this year's Hallow's End holiday event. Today MMO Champion received word that these masks will indeed be the two new playable races for the upcoming expansion, whom many are calling Cataclysm. Careful: There be spoilers ahead.
But why would we play Goblins and Worgen, if indeed this news is true? Well, think about it: I really believe we are heading into the Maelstrom with this next expansion, and with the Maelstrom come two very locations critical to WoW lore -- Kezan and Gilneas.
Kezan is the homeland of the Goblins, a huge island in the south seas of Azeroth. The largest city on Kezan is Undermine, a place highly referenced around WoW. Adding a goblin playable race introduces the Horde faction to a rich and humorous culture that they are only mildly acquainted with.
What about the Worgen then? Behind the Greymane Wall an entire people have holed up, hoping to save themselves from the Worgen plague (damn that Scythe of Elune). What if that didn't work out so well for them, and they instead built a seafaring society of wolf people? We already know from the images seen on the Burning Crusade behind the scenes DVD that a travelling route will be passing through Gilneas from Kezan. It looks like the Alliance will finally have their fuzzy race.
While this isn't a surprising rumor, if it turns out to be true we will have two very cool concepts to play with in the next expansion: pirates and werewolves. A note on why I figure Goblins would be a Horde race: The Alliance already has an engineering joke race (gnomes), so it makes sense that the Goblins, so much the opportunists and outcasts, would join the rag tag horde.
I'll keep an eye out for more information as the days creep toward BlizzCon, but it looks like we will have some very cool announcements to report on at the convention.
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