World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: No Neutral Goblins; Lots of Flying

Goblins and Worgen as depicted on worldofwarcraft.com's Cataclysm site

The word is out, and some of what I've predicted here is right, and some is wrong. Goblins won't be a neutral race, sadly (I really think this would have helped WoW by implying that at least one race is capable of dividing politics from the color of their skin....)

However, Goblins will be one of the two new races. Worgen will be the other. There will be flying mounts in the old world, which we've been asking for forever. Also many of the long-in-the-works items will be in Cataclysm:

• Uldum
• Gilneas (home of the Worgen)
• Rated battlegrounds

The really exciting part about this expansion is that it will re-shape most of the old world, and place high and low level players in the same continents again. For PvP servers, this may not be a win, but for the rest of the servers, it's going to be nice to get a sense again that there are other players around, and not just glimpse the occasional other leveling player.

There'a lot of art samples up on MMO-Champion (who have been predicting a lot of what's coming up over the past month or two) and they've also put up a FAQ that's quite helpful, though they don't explain where it came from (something at Blizzcon, one imagines).

WoW.com has a really cool map up and a liveblog of the whole announcement panel.

C|Net tried to cover the announcement, but they can't even keep the links on their brief WoW article working. I'll get more info and add it here, as I can.

Other details:

• Level cap 85
• Worgen will be able to transform to/form wolf form
• Goblins will save Thrall after being decimated by Deathwing, which is why the remaining goblins join the Horde
• Large scale use of phasing (where your actions can place you in a different version of a zone than others see) will be part of the expansion
• Every raid encounter will have a hard-mode