The hour is almost upon us. Worgen will go live in less than 72 hours. The Beta has been closed down, the news releases have come and gone, level 80′s have their Justice points all stocked up . . . so what’s left? A quick review before the plunge, of course.

• Worgen race changes will be available immediately as Cataclysm drops.
• Recruit-A-Friend works with worgen.
• All the new worgen forms have been seen: flightform, druid forms, running wild, male and female dances.
• No new Moonkin form or travel form. Nuff said.
• Darkmoon Faire site awards are unlocked: hi-rez worgen pics here and here!
• MMO-Champions has your new zone leveling progression map here.
• Be prepared for brand new Raid Markers.
• Don’t forget your heroic loot list and Raid loot list!

We also have some pre-Cataclysm worgen fan art on WoW’s new site:

No, I have not been listening to my local doomsday cult too much. However, Blizzard’s recent devchat with Bestbuy gave us some more ‘official’ lore teasers that cannot be ignored. The implication is Darnassus (specifically, the Worgen District) is, at minimum, going to be receiving a big visit from Deathwing at some point in the near future. No, the city cannot get the ‘Stood In The Fire’ achievement, it doesn’t want one of those. But it will likely get one nonetheless. First up, let’s see some of the transcript, shall we? (pardon, these were cut and paste with no editing)

Will darnasus be re built to be a real tree or will it always look like a dead stump with trees at the top.
- …but now that Deathwing is doing his thing it makes much more sense than it used to! ;]
– Deathwing hates trees.

What happened with the Worgen district in Stormwind?
We decided it didn’t really fit very well, it was looking kind of awkwardly forced into the city. Plus deathwing would have destroyed it anwyays.

Okay, let’s let that sink in for a moment.  ‘Deathwing hates trees.’ and ‘Plus deathwing would have destroyed it anwyays.’ Now, from those two sentences, one cannot be blamed for being under the impression that Deathwing might just have it out for the Worgen race. Or Darnassus. Or both. Likely both. Blizzard is giving us a giant goblin signal flare that, yes, worgen are going to take it on the chin from the Big Bad Piano-playing Dragon. Will Deathwing play ‘em off? I certainly hope not, but it looks that way. Azeroth is going to get a major can of woopass anyway, so this could be a part of his entrance. But it could also mean more. We don’t know. And with the Worgen Doggy Tree setup in Delf Town, and the ‘Deathwing hates trees’ quip, I dunno. Blizzard is pointing to Darnassus and saying ‘bring some marshmellows, things are gonna get hot’. You tell me.

Druid
Is the Moonkin form for troll and worgen on the beta and ptr the final form or is it just a placeholder?
Final!

What. A. Bummer. The art department ran out of time to get Moonkin done in time for release. Not a shocker, I hate to say. Hopefully, we’ll see it later on in the expansion. With the new Moonkin pet and revised Drood forms, I believe we will. Eventually. You don’t redo Drood’s Tree form (with a shiny new COOLDOWN, ahem) and then NOT redo Moonkin. You just DO NOT do that to Droods, Blizz. I also hope the entire ‘cooldown’ thing stays with Tree of Life and DOES NOT spread like an evil alien virus to the other forms. NO. DO NOT WANT. Not cool. I get it that Blizz wants to give Resto Droods the chance to actually see themselves (and their Tier armor), and let others see them as well. But it SHOULD NOT BE for all forms. I’ll just put that out there for all worgen droods and hope we see some solidarity. DYSLEXIC NORGEW UNTIE! Hoo-ah!

Very, very nice, isn’t it? With this little release, we now know Blizz has a MASSIVE number of model revamps on the way, especially for droods. I figure we’ll see a revised aquatic form as well, what with all the underwater areas we’ll be going into (and underwater mounts like Abyssal Seahorses to boot). Worgen aquatic forms might look particularly dangerous (even though we can’t attack in said form), so I’m anxious to see what we get. This reveal also brings up other questions:

• Will Blizzard do away with Drood travel form? Or will we get new models for those too?
• What will the new Moonkin models look like? YEE! (yes, I said ‘YEE!)
• Has anyone seen our regular flightform? We now have our epicz, but standard would be nice to see, too.

As always, keep your eyes peeled. We’re a month away from Cataclysm (if there are no delays) so expect more worgen news as we count down the clock.

Female Dance, emotes, casting animations

Female Transformation, Running Wild worgen mount

MALE Running Wild

I absolutely LOVE what the art department has done for Running Wild for both male and female worgen. Lemme quote Chris Metzen: You know it’s gonna be awesome!

My one and only gripe, and this is non-negotiable, Blizzard . . .  fix the snorting. No, claims to the contrary, that’s not sniffing, that’s snorting. We don’t sound like wolves, wolfmen, wolverines, or anything even remotely wolfish. Think pecary, piggish, ham, BACON. Yes, we sound like bacon on 4 legs. There, I said it. PLEASE FIX IT! It is one IRRITATING sound file, please don’t make us mute the entire game for it. I’m almost convinced someone put it in there as a joke, just to hear our QQ.

There is also some issues with the female running wild animation (spare arms and such), but that’s natural at this stage in the beta. I didn’t bother showing a recent youtube by the Cynical Brit with a very broken male worgen running wild animation. It wasn’t even textured right, you knew it was broken. So I waited until we had something working to show TODAY. Awesome, awesome, awesome! There are already comments on WoWInsider to the effect that some worgen players may never use another mount again. Yes, Running Wild is just that awesome. Now to figure out how to modify game sound files in case Blizzard gets lazy . . .

Many people are breathing a sigh of relief now that new updates are landing on the PTR for female worgen. It seems hair and ear style choices have arrived. Her eyebrows have also been changed so she doesn’t look so ‘chi-wow-ua’, as one commentator put it. It appears Blizzard is sampling reaction from the public on this before they release it. I like this process. Hairstyles are definitely riffing on the 80′s, with Tina Turner Thunderdome ferocity. Ear choices also vary widely too. If you don’t want bat ears, you’re good. If you want drooping ears, small ears, or fox ears, you’re set. If you want wide-angle, satellite receivers, you got ‘em. Having epic gear in the video doesn’t hurt either. Hair color does not appear to be in yet, but facial color is. There’s plenty of tribal looks, but something tells me we haven’t gotten a final pass here yet.

More as we get it, female fans. Enjoy your new eyebrows!

Listen to the soothing, chillaxin’, funken-groovin tune while the showcase introduces the current Moonkin forms currently on the PTR (worgens are shown last). This will likely be how worgen balance droods roll when Cataclysm drops . . . but you can bet they will get an model update eventually. First all the feral forms, then Tree of Life (which is now a freaking cool down, no less), so you know new Moonkin models are on the way. It is a question of when, not if. In the meantime, take a gander at the ‘placeholder’ forms for the time being. This is what we have right this second on the PTR, so it helps to know. Also, not much has happened since female worgen models dropped (again). Keep an eye out, because that is likely to change the closer we get to Blizzcon.

There it is on the PTR, folks. Thanks go to Feral In Charge, who posted this up a mere 10 minutes after it hit the PTR. Just a few pointers:

1. This is on the PTR only right now.
2. The real animations are not added, so you don’t go to all fours yet.
3. The cameraman takes the time to compare it to Darkflight at around 1:20
4. KMFDM’s rendition of ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’ is the creepiest version of the song I have ever heard.

Enjoy and keep an eye out. The animations ought to be added soon enough.

MMO-Champion keeps releasing more and more info on the latest beta build 12984 (codename Puppy), and it is a monster. First came the bombshell that worgen will be their own racial mount, and now this. Female worgen have had their models revamped in much the same way that male worgen underwent the knife. I was a bit concerned about the original worgen female model. Yes, it was vixenish, but the females came across more foxy than wolfish. No more! As you can see, worgen females look just as dangerous and epic as female orcs, if not more so. In fact, I think the art department accidently spilled an oversized bottle of Epic Sauze on her and said ‘hmm, looks good! Keep it.’ I cannot complain one bit. Again, well played, Blizzard.

WoWInsider honestly has the most extensive gallery I can find on them, at the moment. Take a peek, savor it, and be on the look out for more. Blizzard dumped a TON of awesome epicness this week in the latest build. That’s just on worgen, there’s more for everyone! If you are Horde, feeling left out? Don’t be! The Horde get, without a doubt, one of the coolest mounts to ever appear in the game, the Kron’Kar Annihilator. Personally, I am now torn. I will certainly be leveling a worgen, but I may race change one of my mains over to Horde, just to get this mount. Yes, it is that unbelievably epic.

I’m still trying to stop a wolfish grin (sorry) after hearing the news. It appears that the worgen ‘racial mount’ may have finally revealed itself. But not as a 3D model, no sirree. It seems WE might be our own racial mount. From MMO-Champion:

Someone very smart pointed out something very disturbing. Worgens already had Darkflight, a temporary speed spell applying a Mod Speed to the character. So, why did Blizzard add that spell in this build?

• Running Wild – Drop to all fours to run as fast as a wild animal.

This spell doesn’t apply a mod speed, and applies a “Mounted” aura to the player. It’s a racial, and it’s apparently a Level 20 spell. It also has a 1.5 sec cast time, like all the mounts spells. I don’t want to say it yet, but that would explain why we never saw a model for the Worgen Mount.

Well played, Blizzard, well played! Many of us wanted to run on all fours like our NPC counterpart, and it like we finally can! If you are an old salt at WoW, you may remember the Plainstrider racial skill. Tauren at the time did not have mounts, they just ran faster by engaging their racial ability. This is why the word ‘plainstrider’ still appears to have a little more meaning among some old Tauren NPC’s and such (not to mention the bird). It obviously got nixed for kodos, but the idea was still intriguing. Fast forward to today: Running Wild. I was a bit disappointed that we weren’t seeing worgen have ANY ability to get on all fours, like our namesake NPC’s do when they chase after prey. After all, what’s the point of being a werewolf if you can’t run on all fours? This spell pops up at level 20, it is an aura, and has a 1.5 second cast time. This will make it fairly easy to switch to combat, much like a drood shapeshifts. I’m hoping there might be a glyph or a buff somewhere down the line which decreases our cast time for this. One can hope.

Combine this with our Darkflight racial and worgen can become very fast hunter-killers. I shudder to think about worgen rogues in PVP. And don’t get me started on worgen kitty droods. Some might complain that Blizzard made this decision because of crunchtime, that it got shoved down the schedule and we lost out on a true racial mount. BAH! BAH, I say! This is a win-win. If it bought the art dept some time AND we get to run on all fours, awesome. That’s a win-win. There are a TON of new mounts already appearing in Cataclysm alone. Camels, drakes, underwater mounts (like seahorses), mechanized mounts, on and on. We can pick and choose what else we want and we STILL get to run on all fours! WOOT!

At any rate, HUZZAH! THANK YOU BLIZZARD!

[EDIT: WoWInsider is confirming through Zarhym that yes, this is our racial mount! AwesomeBBQsauceponyride! Zarhym explains: Ultimately, we feel Running Wild fits very well with the nature of the worgen race. Rather than getting a physical mount, they get down and sprint on all fours. When you're playing a worgen, it just feels awesome. I can't say it enough, THANK YOU BLIZZARD! ]>)

Now isn’t that nice? The changes you make to your worgen are reflected in your human form on screen now. This way there’s no guess work to it! If Blizzard is doing this for worgen, I wonder if they will do it for droods . . . likely not, but they can hope. At any rate, it is a small but very welcome touch to our creation process.