Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Goblin's Playable In Next World of Warcraft Expansion?

WoW.com has the unofficial lowdown on the new races for the fabled Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft.
Our sources have told us that the new races of Cataclysm will be:

* Worgen – Alliance
* Goblin – Horde
Personally, I don't believe it. Goblin's are a neutral race within the Warcraft lore. It would cause a ton of lore-based conflicts within the game world. Not to mention how out of place some places of the game world would feel. Goblins joining the Horde would break too many parts of World of Warcraft.

This doesn't mean Blizzard can't make it work. Blizzard could update the entire world and switch all the Goblin content over to Horde content. This would be out of character though, as Blizzard has shown that they'd much rather create new content rather than update or fix old content.

In the rare case that this does prove out to be true, Blizzard will probably just spin off some sort of new Golbin tribe (or whatever Goblin groups are called) and attach it to the Horde. Thus, they have nothing to do with the current Golbins in game. Blizzard is more than free to invent whatever they want. I just don't think it will feel right for WoW.

Worgen? Who the fuck cares about the Alliance.

6 comments:

  1. Perhaps there are goblins that aren't in the Steamwheedel Cartel. :) Then they could be a new goblin sect that align Horde!

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  2. Graktar7:06 PM

    They will almost certainly just create a new tribe of goblins that aren't neutral and want to join the horde. They'll be Maelstrom Goblins or something like that. No, it won't feel right, but Blizzard has amply demonstrated their willingness to trash the 'feel' of their game when it comes to making 'new' things. Blood Elves as horde? Space shaman? Yeah.

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  3. Mmmmm Blueberries.

    And Cuppy "sect" is a much better word than tribe!

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  4. I've said it before, simply adding 2 new playable races == fail, IMHO. And not just because the "feel" of the game will be different, but in my eyes for much more practical reasons, e.g. lack of enough character slots per server, dilution of dev resources on something that people don't want and adds nothing real (is pure fluff) to the game. At least the in-game barber shop was something people wanted, but this? Another "skin" for yet another alt? Blah...

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  5. Blizzard has never been above trashing established lore to get something working (Draenei? Spaceships? Etc?). So a separate tribe/sect/corporation of Goblins which was never before heard of and is aligned with the Horde is a stretch but well within Blizzard's guildelines for stretching.

    Worgen on the Alliance, on the other hand... does not compute so well. The only option they'll have is to finally go ahead and open up Gilneas as a starting area (5 years after launch) but I can already hear the ulcers forming in the stomachs of all the poor Blizzard writers assigned to this. Trying to make it fit the lore.

    Gilneas -broke- from the Alliance on purpose, isolated themselves to avoid the Plague and got turned into Worgen (short story). There's no way to make this work other than... "oh look, a faction of Worgen whom no one has heard of before is breaking isolation and joining the Alliance. Huzzah, etc."

    *Yawn*

    I hope they surprise me, but they've been writing themselves into corners for years.

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  6. Pandarens > Worgen.

    nuff said.

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