I'm hardly a roleplayer, but I have to agree with this. The whole Goblin starting experience (and to a slightly lesser extent the three 80+ zones, but that's a whole other topic) just doesn't sit right with me. There's far too much emphesis on "YOU ARE THE BEST PERSON EVER! YES, JUST YOU AND ONLY YOU!"

There's also the fact that, unless I missed something in the text, which I might well have done, we're supposed to believe the entire Bilgewater Cartel ends up consisting of only a single boatful of Goblins, a large number of which you end up killing.

I think they're simply testing out a new approach (and what better a place to get a huge amount of testing done than a starting zone for a new race).
In all of the other starting zones, and in a good 60-70% of all questing you do anywhere, you're RandomOrc3, a "nobody" doing the grunt work from zone to zone. Sure there are plenty of "you're the hero" quests, but I'd say the majority are pretty standard and consist of things "anyone" could do.

This works perfectly fine for some people, and doesn't for others.

That being said, I think Blizz is ultimately just striking for a good balance, and in the end not everyone is going to satisfied. I think the new use of phasing has allowed the "personally epic" questlines to really shine, and I think they're going to push it as far as they think its reasonable to go. And in the end, not everyone will be happy with it, but that's the nature of the beast.

I see what you're saying N-train. It just strikes me as a bit off that they're personalizing it to that extent. I just think that there should be a bit more balance, that with the Goblin starting zone the pendulum has swung a bit too far to the "hero" side.

I know that nobody likes to be a, well, nobody. But at the same time, if literally every goblin who comes out of the starting zone experience has personally exploded the island and personally saved Thrall it sort of takes away from the epicness of all of it, and kind of makes it a little bit more difficult to roleplay.

I know they are trying to make the starting zones feel more epic and have the player be more involved in them, but I think they can do that without having the player be personally responsible for such unignorably major events.

And I get that this is beta, and I'm not in it so my feedback means little but... that's how I see it from my outside vantage :)

I have to disagree entirely. Part of the problem with WoW is that, prior to Cataclysm, it didn't do much to tell a story, much less involve you in the story being told. It's very nice to see that being fixed in Cataclysm.

This sort of thing is already happening a bit in Wrath. It's fine the first time you do it, but the second, third and fourth time you're leveling alts though it, it gets a little ridiculous. I see my character's leveling experience as a story, I don't want them to all be the same.

Really, there are already plenty of quests in wow that don't make sense when you think about how there are thousands of other people doing them too. Lots of the instancing quests in Northrend got pretty epic there, and changed things so that other people shouldn't have had to do them again, but there they were. Killing dungeon bosses is even worse since we do it multiple times in a day. The Lich king fight, for example - how many of us were in the party that brought him down? I doubt we remember seeing every guy with a Kingslayer title in that group with us.

Considering what Goblins are like - each and every one of them probably DOES believe they're the best person in the world ever. So the starting zone is a great way to ease into roleplaying one.

I don't think it is any diffrent from how every dranei that completes the azuremyst/bloodmyst zones is the "promised one", subject of ancient stillpine prophecies.

"Also, so many Cata screenshots lately are making me say "That's WoW??" Absolutely stunning."

Until you get the original player skins into these zones. Seriously, those thorny crabs now have more detail in them than any single one of the skins of characters. I know I'm deviating from topic, it just aggravates me to no end that all these new models that we are seeing have about 10x the amount of detail as player models.

I know Blizzard has said that they are cognizant of this, but I almost wish they'd spend an entire expansion cycle just updating ALL of the art assets of the original game (from player models to that horribly ugly windrider model that the Horde is stuck with). Bonus points for introducing sub-races (Tauren could be from Mulgore OR Tanka, Orcs could be from Durotar or Mag'har, etc.).

Okay -- /rant.

I agree with Killik, goblins can be rped as believing they did it all themselves the same way as some fishermen exaggerate their catches ^^

Actually, Archmage, I was just meaning the background. But I do agree-- it's a bit sad when you look at some of the doodads and they're more detailed, with more polygons and just generally shinier than your player model.

I have a theory that Blizzard is testing new player model feedback with the upgraded leader models. Look at what they are starting with... some of the most complained-about models, the human male (Varian), human female (Jaina) and orc male (Garrosh). If we like them, they may decide to go ahead and start work on new player models, since one of the concerns they expressed was players are so attached to their character they may not like the new models as well.