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World of Warcraft Cataclysm was announced this year at BlizzCon 2009, and we were there. I sat down with the demo and played through the Goblin and Worgen start areas, and was impressed at how fun the Goblin area was and how stunning the Worgen's area was.

I'm just going to go into a full step by step account of the Goblin's area which stated at Shipwreck Shore. Now keep in mind that this was a demo, and some or all of this could change, but more importantly this entire article is a spoiler. Do no t read on if you don't want to know the Goblin'sback story before you play Cataclysm.

Here's a brief explanation of the Goblins' recent switch from neutrality directly from the Official World of Warcraft site (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/goblin.html). "Recently, the goblins of Kezan have found a new enemy in the Alliance - unexpected and unprofitable encounters with this faction have driven certain trade princes from their comfortable neutrality. Reforming old pacts with their one-time allies, the goblins have been welcomed into the Horde with open arms."

I began my adventure with a male Goblin Shaman. There were no female options at Blizzcon, so we only got to play the male models. The Goblins had four racial abilities the first being a passive 1% increase to attack speed and spell haste called "Time is Money". The next two shared a cool down, they were "Rocket Barrage" and "Rocket Jump"; both pretty much speak for themselves, but Rocket Jump was awesome to play with and speed things up while running around.

For my first quest I found my Shaman was lying adrift on a wrecked piece of his ship, apparently dead after an Alliance attack. Luckily the NPCs were able to shock me back to life with some Soggy Jumper Cables. I'm glad they had to, or it would have been a short demo.

My first quest was to rescue Goblin NPCs from escape pods that were floating in the ocean. I was given a swimming speed buff, and the only agro-able enemies in the water were some sharks who were no match for my Shaman. After making quick work of saving my allies, it was time to head to shore and start getting our encampment into shape.

The pressing issues at the base camp was monkeys who had gotten into our dynamite, raptors, and lost supplies in the jungle. The monkeys were awesome. You would throw your nitroglycerin filled bananas to them, and they would explode and shoot up into the air. If you waited long enough you'd even get to see them fall back down about fifteen seconds later. The raptors were you standard grind, and the supplies were your standard find the sparkling quest items lying around.

At this point it was time to head to the kaja'mite mine for the next leg of quests which consisted of escorting a minor through the mine which lead you to a dead Orc and his journal. So pretty quickly into the demo it was time to visit the Orcs and deliver the journal. Upon running up the hill to meet with the Orcs you find yourself with an "enemy of my enemy" scenario which has the Orcs asking for some Goblin ingenuity to help with clearing the path to the Alliance SI:7 assassins, and finding and killing them.

The path was blocked by new enemy plants which looked a bit like a walking Venus fly traps, but with slimmer heads. The Orcs couldn't get passed them no matter what they tried, but they felt that maybe the "Goblin Weed Wacker" on my belt may help. So I clicked the quest item and became the twirling bane of the walking plants on the path. I quickly took out one-hundred plants and turned the quest in. When I came back to the path, the plants were all dead thanks to Blizzard's new(ish) phasing ability.

Once we were able to progress a bit further down the path the Orcs were in real trouble because they couldn't see the SI:7 assassins, but luckily I had some infra-red goggles so I could save the day. I was given an NPC to follow me around and help kill the Alliance assassins, and with my goggles to help find them it was no problem at all.

Now with the Orc Base Camp safe from the SI:7 assassins, it was time to head to the Alliance Beachhead and steal their Gyrochoppa. I had a short grind of Alliance at the Beachhead before I found the keys, and jumped on the Gyrochoppa which took me aboard the Alliance flagship in the middle of their fleet.

On the Alliance ship I made my way below deck and found a lightly guarded magical cage. After taking out the guards I found no other than Thrall inside the cage. He made a comment along the lines of "I can't believe I got caught by the Alliance again" once I rescued him.

As you could image Thrall wasn't to happy about being captured, and probably wasn't excited at all by being held by one level 8 guard, so he turned me a quest item which turned me into a Cyclone of Elements. Basically I was a big twister and I shot lighting at the Alliance on their ships and in their lifeboats. Once enough were taken out I returned to the Orc Base Camp, was thanked by Thrall for my timely rescue, and used a giant slingshot or catapult to shoot myself across the water to the mainland.

While the Worgen were a bit more stylish than the Goblin, the lighthearted feel to the quests made the Goblin start area much more fun to play through. The Goblin quests were straightforward and I never had a moment of "hmm, where am I supposed to find that" or "how the heck am I supposed to do that".

If the BlizzCon demo is any indication, I will be expecting great things from Cataclysm.