This article is part of our Countdown to Cataclysm series, helping you prepare for Cataclysm launch one day at a time.
As Deathwing makes his escape from Deepholm, the Greymane Wall finally collapses, revealing the kingdom of Gilneas. For years, the kingdom had locked itself away behind the wall, shutting out the troubles of the rest of the world. King Genn Greymane, leader of Gilneas, has been dealing with his own problems behind the wall, however, including the spreading of the worgen curse, which is turning his people into ferocious creatures.
Short and sweet here, folks: Blizzard has announced that race changes to goblins and worgen will be available immediately upon Cataclysm launch. That's 12:01 a.m. PST Dec. 7. Additionally, there will no longer be any achievements for being the first of your race to hit level 85; the achievements are now class-only.
Great news for people who want to switch from their terrible male night elf druid into a dashing (literally) male worgen druid, or basically anyone who's tired of playing a troll of either gender.
Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley will be your host today.
Hello, WoW Insider community. I'm sure you've heard of me -- I'm Mathew, one of the co-hosts of the WoW Insider Show, probably the best WoW podcast ever*. Our show is pretty great! However, we are desperately lacking one very crucial component: a theme song. We need a theme song.
So, community, I beg and beseech you, help us come up with a theme song for our awesome podcast. Suggest something, record something, give us ideas, anything. We want to hear your input! I have personally added my selection to the top of The Queue, as I believe punk/heavy metal versions of Ke$ha songs will more than likely bring us the listenership we deserve.
* Source: My mother.
Everyone on the planet asked:
How can we contribute ideas for the WoW Insider Show theme song?
Great question, everyone. Here are the ways to help us out:
Comment in this thread
Send an email to theshow@wow.com with the subject "Theme song"
Worgen have recently gotten a little bit of an upgrade in the Cataclysm beta. All of their voice emotes now have appropriate sounds to go along with them, and some of their emotes have new animations. Also, like the night elves, worgen now do a flip randomly while jumping. This is, however, a back flip -- and it looks pretty cool. The video above contains a complete catalog of all the available emotes and audio and shows off the new worgen back flip. You also get a chance to see the male worgen dance in action if you've missed it before -- and it is all done with a spiffy top hat to add that little touch of class.
Female worgen have yet to be fully implemented in the beta, so we will just have to wait to see if they get any special emotes or animations to go along with them.
Be sure to have your speakers turned up a bit, the sound came out a little soft. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
For all those of you out there who don't have the time to slog through the 100+ articles we published on BlizzCon 2009, we've condensed the events of the past few days into the most important things you need to know:
THE END OF WRATH: Developers gave some pretty revealing information on what we can expect to see in patch 3.2.2 (the revamped Onyxia raid) and in patch 3.3, where we'll finally stare down Arthas himself.
If you'd like a more thorough look at how BlizzCon 2009 went, visit our round-ups on Day One and Day Two of the con for a more complete guide to our articles, galleries, and videos.
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week WoW.com brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? Leave a comment below!
The nation of Gilneas is one of the oldest human kingdoms that still exists. Founded after the breaking of the human empire of Arathor, Gilneas was considered one of the great Seven Kingdoms, along with Kul Tiras, Alterac, Dalaran, Lordaeron, Stromgarde, and Stormwind.
Gilneas is located on a rocky peninsula that juts out over the Great Sea on Lordaeron's west coast, southwest of Silverpine Forest. High seaside cliffs keep the kingdom safe from attack by water and the foreboding Greymane Wall keeps it locked safely away from the struggles of modern Lordaeron and, by extension, Azeroth. No one has been allowed in or out of the kingdom for nearly ten years, and no one has seen or heard from the burly, gruff, self-sufficient Gilneans in just as long.
The source of this isolation is none other than Genn Greymane, hereditary ruler of the kingdom under the Greymane Dynasty for decades.
Well, readers, BlizzCon 2009 is over and done, and our staff is slowly but surely beginning to make its way home in celebrated zombie-like fashion. In the meantime, we've outsourced article production to our household pets, so be gentle with your criticism of Toonces' efforts today (stupid cat can't even spell QQ correctly). Anyway, here's what happened on Day 2 of BlizzCon:
The Props team at BlizzCon showed a video on what they do, and also displayed a lot of the characterization and mood setting of the new Goblin and Worgen starting areas. The Lost Isles for the Goblins are just beautiful and quirky and funny, abounding in tropical drinks, a breakfast machine, and a "rocket-catapult-turtle-powered-machine" (and did they actually build a railroad out of bamboo?), although I have to say that the Dickensian/Victorian feel of Gilneas is just...words fail me. It's lovely. This is perhaps the loveliest, most haunting, spooky and creepy zone Blizzard's ever done, and...it's going to be an almighty lagfest when Cataclysm hits. Oh well. Truthfully, I had no idea just how much of what we think of as the "landscape" is in fact the Props team at work.
As an FYI for readers who have observed this on previous video, yes, there are gold-sellers' ads popping up on Viddler, and no, we're not happy about it, and we certainly didn't put them there.
Well, folks, the first day of BlizzCon went by in a blur, and we're still bouncing about all the stuff that was announced yesterday. If you don't want to slog through a ton of entries to get the TL:DR version, we've prepped a recap for you that'll take you to the highlights:
BATTLE.NET: Battle.net will gain new features in the expansion, including an XBox-Livesque ability to see what your friends are playing and which servers they're on, in addition to sending messages to them.
Dec 2nd 2010 at 3:00PM 
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In 
