MMO-Champion is always good for authorative infomation, mostly because of the nature of the source material, namely the game files. Late Friday
Boubouille pulled out 4 new Halloween masks from the game files: 2 Goblin and 2 Worgen, and made the assumption from this that these were the two new races Blizzard were planning for the Expansion. As a rule he's seldom wrong, as the game files pretty much speak for themselves.
WoW.com jumped on it as well. Seems to me that if two major WoW sites are prepared to add credence to this, it's worth serious consideration.
It is logical to assume that as we had a new Hero Class last time around Blizzard would go back to adding new races this time around. This would pull a lot of people back into the game to relevel with new quests and factions. It's a cracking choice of races: if the Goblins were indeed the Horde faction as is being suggested, it could go a long way to redressing the Horde/Alliance inbalance on many servers.
What makes me most excited about these races however isn't anything that's been datamined, but it's something that's been around since... well before MMO even existed. It's a list which apparently you can be banned for posting on the Official Forums. If Internet legend is to be believed, it was leaked back in the day by 'a disgruntled ex Blizzard employee' I'm betting after all these years there must be a few of those... So I will paraphrase. This list has accurately mirrored the Draenai/Blood Elves starting areas, it predicted many of the Northrend zones and
if you look at a copy (scroll down that thread to find it), it has a section entitled 'Maelstrom Set' You'll find many places mentioned in that list. Here are three of them, in no particular order:
The Broken Isles
Kezan
Gilneas
We already know Blizzard have copyrighted the word 'Cataclysm' in the last few weeks. So let's take a closer look at those places (with location links via the lovely
WoWWiki)
For those of you who don't know:
Gilneas is a human nation and kingdom located in the peninsula directly south of Silverpine Forest on the continent of Lordaeron. The kingdom was founded following the breaking of Arathor and is ruled by the Greymane dynasty. Besides the peninsula, the kingdom also included the island of Zul'Dare.
Ooooh, so that's a Human area RIGHT NEXT DOOR to where a load of Worgan exist. If you've done any of the Horde quests in that area (or indeed if you've visited Silverpine Hold or Shadowfang Keep) you'll know all about Arugal, who of course is ressurected in Northrend and who you have to kill all over again in Grizzly Hills. If we put aside the levels allocated on the original list, this would be an idea spot to stick a starting zone. It would ressurect a ton of Old World Content, it would mean Blizz could reinvent SFK and stick a load of new quests in it for Alliance. This list also points to Grim Batol as an update area. Huge Great big Underground Zone right there, would make a superb spot for a 80+ instance, would also bring people back to the Old World... and woudn't be much work for Blizz to spruce up. The dragons might get a bit miffed at being moved mind. Where would I farm my red dragonscale then???
So what about the Undermine, the fabled home of the Goblins?
The Undermine is an underground city located on the small island Kezan in the southern seas of Azeroth near the Maelstrom.
Ooh look, Kezan's on the List too. Now there's a thing.
Now far be it from me to subscribe to speculation, but from what I see in the Game Files and what I've seen historically, I reckon I'm confident enough to say that the new races in the Expansion are going to be the Goblins and the Worgen, and it's going to be based in the Maelstrom. It's only a month to wait now for Blizzcon.
I look forward to being proved wrong.
