Friday, May 14, 2010

Another Cataclysm preview: Engineer Whirleygig

By now everyone is probably well aware of Goblins becoming a playable race in the next expansion, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. But goblins have been around a long time in the Warcraft universe, fulfilling the roles of crazy tinkerers. Beginning in Warcraft II, they have been with us ever since. And there are, in fact, quite a few rarespawn goblins in World of Warcraft already.

This entry is about engineer Whirleygig.



Goblins, goblins everywhere

Engineer Whirleygig is a rare mob goblin found in the northern Barrens on Kalimdor.



Whirleygig can be found in one singular location, and is thus quite easy to track down. He is always found inside the command shack on top of the derrick in the Sludge Fen in the northern barrens. The area is crawling with hostile mobs, so take caution if you visit it at low levels. Whirleygig, if he is up, will be standing in front of one of the consoles in the small control room.



Fighting Whirleygig

Engineer Whirleygig has a fairly short respawn time (counted in hours rather than days at least) and can thus be found relatively often. He is hostile to both alliance and horde, and although he is not an elite has some interesting abilities. He constantly carries a remote around, and when engaged uses it to summon a harvest reaper (a compact version of a harvest golem) to fight beside him.



His second ability is also very fitting to his title of engineer, as he will start summoning explosive mechanical sheep which run towards his opponents and explode!



I really like when mobs have a "theme" that they follow, and this guy really does look like a crazed engineer, charging in gripping a remote and using gadgets to fight you. Unfortunately he provides no engineering-themed drops, only providing a standard uncommon quality drop when defeated.

What's his story?

Whirleygig is an employee of the Venture Company, a goblin cartel which can be found world-wide on Azeroth. The Venture Co. seem to be one of the least scrupulous of all goblin companies (not that most of them aren't rather shady to say the least) and can always be found performing some form of exploitation with little regard to wildlife or natives.



As such, it's no wonder we find an oil rig set up in the Barrens. There's even a mining operation nearby too, right on Thrall's doorstep. Both alliance and Horde adventurer often find themselves in conflict with the Venture Co. and the Sludge Fen is no exception, with several quests in the area. It would also be irresponsible of me not to mention that there are two more rarespawns just in this very small area. The Barrens has a lot of rare mobs.

It is a safe assumption that Whirleygig is the chief engineer of the operation, in charge of maintaining the technological aspect of the oil rig operation. His abilities fully support this and probably making him a valuable Venture employee.

On a closing note, with the massive overhauls to the Barrens with the release of Cataclysm, it's very uncertain if the Venture Co. operation and Whirleygig will survive the transition. If they do, Whirleygig may get a new model, much like the exisiting blood elves did with the release of the Burning Crusade. Only time will tell.

Until next time, I got what you need!

~Dragonshade

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That was a pretty cool rarespawn. Its nice to have some lowlevel rares that have something beyond just a special name.

Calvinball said...

Very cool! I've run by that derrick numerous times with no idea this crazed engineer was lurking inside. Very cool that he utilizes engineering tricks to fight, even with no interesting drops that makes him one of my favorite posts of yours thusfar! Keep up the good work, love the site.