Gnomeregan - let the troggs have it.

Like all good litle gnomes, I was supposed to grow up to be a rocket scientist or a clockmaker or something. Apparently a lifetime of inhaling black smoke and forever smelling like grease is some kind of gnome legacy I was supposed to live up to. Well forget that. In the end it boils down like this: machines break, magic doesn't. Tools are heavy, soul shards weigh about three ounces each. And while magic has played an up-front and important part in just about every world-changing event in the history of Azeroth, nobody's ever managed to do anything super-cool with machines. I mean, check out he Maelstrom next time pass by on your way to Booty Bay. I guarantee you that wasn't caused by a stick of EZ-Thro Dynamite.

A lot of you guys have probably been through Gnomeregan by now. It's basically a big underground maze full of haywire gizmos and, of course, lots and lots of troggs. It's foul. And it's noisy. And it's dark. There's a reason gnomes keep mechanical squirrels for pets and ride around on those clockwork chickens; nothing living would willingly stay in Gnomeregan for any length of time. Even before the place was ransacked by monsters, there was nothing there with any beauty or value.

I was in Darnassus when the place was overrun, pricing apartments. Night elves are creepy, but at least they know how to live. Color, fresh air, silence... these things are in short supply back in the mountain. It was nice to live in a place that wouldn't randomly explode every couple of weeks.

I didn't go back to Dun Morogh until I was ready for my first few levels of formal warlock training. While I was running around getting accustomed to my new imp (by repeatedly sending him off to be butchered by wolves and yeti) I ran into a bunch of gnomes who had since taken up residence in Ironforge. "It's a shame," they'd say, looking towards Gnomeregan with a sigh, "what with the troggs running the place now."

"Yeah," I'd reply, "but at least now it doesn't smell like industrial waste and battery acid."

My greatest fantasy is that those troggs will find some way into Ironforge too. They can have that whole hellish mountain as far as I'm concerned. Anyone who would willingly live in a lava-filled rock deserves to be eaten by mutants.