Right then, let me take you all back in time just a little.
I was just finishing up middle school when I had my first brush with Warcraft II. I spent a lot of time at my friend's house, watching him play through the orc campaign- we laughed at the extra dialogue we'd get whenever he kept clicking on all the little units, of course.
Without a doubt, though, my favorite units were those little green gremlin-like creatures who kept blowing themselves up and piloting ridiculous machines. I mean, seriously! Submarines attached to the back of giant sea turtles! How can you beat something like that?
Time passed, and I'd just started college when I really got into Warcraft III. That was when Blizzard began shaping the goblins' style into that peculiar mix of pyromania, steampunk, and McGuyver-esque ingenuity that we all know and love. Sure, they'd broken away from the Horde to ply their wares to anyone (and anything) with the right amount of gold, but they were already making their grubby, extravagantly-wasteful mark on Azeroth (without blowing it all up... yet), but still...
Tree-chopping mechs with razorblade hands? Pocket town halls and factories? A hammer-wrench backpack that could turn into a freakin' tank? Yes, please!
A few years later, Blizzard announced their plans for a Warcraft-based MMORPG, and just about everyone thought they'd gone completely off their rockers. Blizzard was a company best known for its real-time strategy games. And Blizzard was suddenly going to dive headfirst into the MMORPG market (already dominated by fantasy-based games), AND its first offering was going to be Yet Another Fantasy-Based Game? Yes, yes, pull the other leg while you're at it, that one's got bells on it.
By the time the open beta rolled around, it was clear that this World of Warcraft was going to be a breath of fresh air. I figured that the neutral goblins weren't really going to be playable, so I was ecstatic when I found out that the little green psychopaths were just about everywhere. Sure, Azeroth was going to hell in a handbasket, but the goblins? They were out doing their own thing! Building race cars, grubbing for treasure and riches, engaging in SCIENCE! with little regard for the environment, their own health, or the collective safety of everyone in a fifty-mile radius...
"The only thing that could make this game any better," I usually told those friends who played WoW alongside me, "would be making goblins a playable race." My hopes were dashed at the launch of the Burning Crusade and, to a lesser extent, Wrath of the Lich King. Still, the space goats and the blood elves were pretty cool, as were the death knights- and, of course, I loved seeing goblins IN SPACE!, where they sometimes toyed with the very fabric of existence itself, and IN NORTHREND!, where they turned the southern half of Storm Peaks into "Explosives, Explosives Everywhere Land." And for a while, I put the thought of playable goblins out of my mind.
When I first heard about Cataclysm, I wasn't one of those people who'd hung onto Blizzard's every move, waiting for some word on the next expansion. All I heard was some far-fetched rumor about playable worgen, which I was on the verge of dismissing until I checked the main website and wait a second there IS a new expansion how did I miss this wait there ARE two new playable races OH MY GOOOOOOOOD--
As excited as I'd been for previous expansions, Blizzard had done what no other expansion had succeeded in doing: it made me gush in excitement about it to my friends. From Warcraft II all the way through Wrath of the Lich King, I'd dreamed of being able to see the Warcraft universe from a goblin's point of view; after all these years, Blizzard has finally granted my wish.
And that excitement only increased when I heard that in the face of the world being split straight down the middle, the goblins were taking their own unique brand of insanity... and turning it up to eleven, along with their typical disregard for common sense. They were blasting Azshara into the shape of the Horde symbol, planting a giant cannon in the bay, and building a pleasure palace/golf course/swimming pool combo smack-dab on an elven historical site. They were turning the various lakes in Orgrimmar into beach fronts, complete with reclining lawn chairs and floating tubs that leaked oil. And, somehow, the goblins were going to become nature-respecting shamans and call on the elements by using mechanical totems that drilled into the earth.
For the battered denizens of Azeroth (and maybe to those players who aren't quite happy with where WoW is going), the Cataclysm will be Hell.
For me, however, the Cataclysm will be nothing short of Heaven.
Everyone can have their badass death knights, their elegant elves, and their epic British werewolves. Me? I'm rolling a grubby, profit-minded goblin shaman, and he'll be joining the tide of little green men who'll take Azeroth by storm with their gravelly New Yorker/Brooklyn/Mafia-esque accents and utter disregard for the environment.