This article will be full of spoilers both lore and gameplay wise. Read ahead at your own risk!

Along with playing the Worgen at Blizzcon last year, I also played around with the Goblins. Where the Worgen have a bit more of a serious storyline, the Goblins are  fun. You start off on the island of Kezan which compared to the rest of Azeroth is like finding a major metropolitan city in the middle of the forest.

You actually start as a high ranking Goblin who is working to try and get up to the Trade Prince’s level but things begin to go wrong once the volcano on the island begins to erupt (no thanks to you) and the Trade Prince realizes what you’ve been doing and sends Pirates to crash your party.

Before leaving Kezan there are some fun quests in order to raise money to get yourself off of the doomed island and onto a boat to escape. But as we all know, this boat doesn’t make it and is shipwrecked after getting caught between an Alliance and Horde naval battle. This is when the game becomes more about survival in a new place and dealing with new threats like Naga and the Oomlot pygmy tribe.

You also help out the Orcs by retrieving a “special piece of cargo” which turns out to be Thrall, no longer in his old, wussy armor. His model is still shown as the Warchief, but once you get to Orgrimmar it’s Garrosh in the seat of power. Sadly you don’t get any reason why Thrall isn’t in Orgrimmar and Garrosh is. But it is rather amusing to see how Garrosh seems a bit nervous hearing from Thrall. I really need to play through more to figure out what’s going on in that story.

The Goblins are fun though all in all and I wouldn’t mind playing through one after release. Their racials are better than the Worgen, but since this is all the beta anything can be changed. In the end though I think members of the horde will enjoy the new members to their side.

You can check out all of my screen caps on Flickr here, and stay tuned for my thoughts on the rest of the Cataclysm beta!