New short story The Goblin Way discusses ethics in Goblin Engineering

The World of Warcraft team has been steadily releasing short stories about some of our favorite tertiary characters in the lead up to The War Within, and this time it’s the Goblins in the spotlight. In The Goblin Way, Andrew Robinson writes about Gazlowe, the leader of the Bilgewater Cartel, and Nogginfogger, the leader of the Steamwheedle Cartel having a Goblin-to-Goblin chat about the future of not only their individual Cartels, but the outlook of Goblinkind as a whole.

Marin Nogginfogger of Nogginfogger Elixir fame represents the old way of doing business as a Goblin. He seeks profitability over all, with his operations using worn out equipment that’s polluting the environment and unsafe for his workers to use. Gazlowe represents, as he long has, a newer way of thinking about the broader implications of how his business affects the world, in addition to the profit he is seeking. The story has a lot of in-depth discussion and consideration between the two leaders as proxy for the general mentalities of Goblins as a whole. The story is a dive into the cultural identity of a race which is frequently depicted as about as deep as a puddle coated in a rainbow-hued oil slick.

If you’re into Goblins, you’ll definitely want to read it. If you’re not, you probably know how it plays out without much further comment. Some of the details seem somewhat dissonant, like how Gazlowe doesn’t get Nogginfogger’s name right for the first half of the story, and then talks about how Thrall knew everyone in Orgrimmar by name, even the people doing scut work, as a show of respect — or perhaps that’s intended as shade. A Goblin’s gotta have his fun, after all.