As you all already know, the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft will open up goblins and the worgen as playable races for the Horde and Alliance, respectively. Well, playable demos of the new starting areas for both races are available on the BlizzCon floor, and I got the chance to try out the life of a goblin first-hand.

WARNING: There are spoilers ahead. If you want your starting area experience to be a complete surprise, you may want to stop reading. Also, I wasn't allowed to take photos of the screen, but you all know what goblins look like anyway, right?

I wasn't able to make a female goblin, so I decided to make a male rogue named Zammy. Now's a good time to mention goblins can't be paladins or druids. I popped into the Lost Isle as a level 6 toon since the first five levels aren't complete yet. While it's not the same as starting as level 55, it was a nice little reprieve to skip the first five levels in the demo.

Zammy materialized laying face down on a broken raft in the middle of the water. A fellow NPC goblin was busy leaving me for dead when Doc Zapnozzle decided to come to my rescue. He attempted to resuscitate me with jumper cables (which we all know don't always work), and my first quest was to snap out of it and stand up.

Once I was alive and kicking, I discovered we had sailed into the middle of a battle between the Alliance and Horde. My next quest was to rescue six goblin survivors who were floating in the water in escape pods. It was a simple collecting mission, but I was happy to find out I was wearing Thermohydratic Flippers to make me swim faster. It appeared to be as a buff.

Speaking of buffs, I switched over to my racial menu to see what exactly Zammy was capable of as he swam near Shipwreck Shore. It turns out Best Deals Anywhere gives me the best gold discount on all items regardless of faction, which seems to fit my rogue perfectly. He also has +15 to Alchemy to help him with chemistry and a 1% increase to attack and casting speed.

The next three racials are, in my opinion, totally fun and interesting. Pack Hobgoblin allows me to call a huge personal servant to my side who will give me access to my bank for one minute. The cooldown is 30 minutes.

Rocket Barrage launches a rocket at an enemy, dealing fire damage. At level 6 it dealt around 36 damage, which helped out in fights. The cooldown is two minutes.

Lastly, goblins have Rocket Jump. which lets you jump forward and fly through the air. It seems like it will be useful in PvP or just to move around quickly at lower levels. The cooldown is two minutes as well and is on the same cooldown as Rocket Barrage. You'll have to choose whether you want to deal damage or jump every couple minutes.

Now it was time for more quests. It turns out the next three all dealt with monkeys. One had me giving bananas to bomb-tossing monkeys to calm them down, the second had me killing Teraptor Hatchlings near the monkeys, and the third had me collecting crates of tools that pop up around where the moneys spawn. I was able to complete them all at the same time and almost dinged level 7 in the short time I played.

As for the Lost Isles, it's located off the coast of Kalimdor and is filled with the shipwrecked goblins. According to the official site, "after the cataclysm reawakened a volcano on their home island one of the goblins' trade princes realized that there was good money to be made in offering panicked goblins a ticket to safety on his ship, taking their life savings - and then selling them into slavery." As I found out through playing, this is the ship that got caught in the crossfire of the Alliance fleet and a Horde ship.

The Lost Isles did have only deadly surpise. I saw a huge elite Teraptor Matriarch, level ??, stomping around the beach. I'm not entirely sure whether another player kited it there from deeper in the jungle or if the beach is its normal stomping ground, but it's certainly something the shipwrecked goblins should look out for as they enter Cataclysm.

From what I played, the goblin seems like a fun race to play with its interesting racials. While the first few quests were the same song and dance we're used to, I'm looking forward to taking a goblin past level 7. And it looks like I'll have a brand new Azeroth to run around to make the grind to 60 a fresh, new experience.

Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff
News Reporter
ZAM.com