I know that ratfaced liar Luglunket has gone tellin' everyone that I didn't invent the amazing-fantastic www.goblinworkshop.com World of Warcraft information database website. I know you probably heard some dwarves dug it up in the Tanaris desert, and I gone borrowed it from 'em. Well, that's not the case. Here's the real wrap:

It was a shimmering September night in 2004, and I was hard at work in my laboratory crafting explosives, when, true as stars, the ghost of Lothar himself descended from the sky aboard a golden flying machine and spake unto me: “Cob, go forth and build me an automated oracle of the superb quality. The burning legion doth be incoming, and we need to gird our heroes with the most excellent infos.”

Not being one to argue when the spirits talk, I sought the council of the all-seeing shaman from the Ballistic clan, and the grandmaster tradesmen from the Stonecutters guild. Armed with their sage advice, alpha access, the top-secret plans and other 'leet hax', I boarded my trusty zeppelin and set sail on an interstellar quest in search of hard-to-find materials.

Of course the first implementation was painfully crude. It was all painted neon goblin green. It smelled suspiciously of volatile rum, and it had to be hand-cranked in order to get it to tell you where the best spot was to farm candles. You think you might have gotten a glimpse at pain and anguish while trying to make those sissy cow/elves in the Cenarion Circle happy, but during those early days I personally smelted down over 16,000 screenshots in order to hand-feed data ingots into the furnace of the great beast.

Eventually, I modded up the osmotic intake and began sucking in information from the very fabric of the Azeroth itself. It only took a few full-time data miners to really flush out the tanks, with only slight casualties. These days, it's pretty much down to a science. Every morning I have to climb down into the belly of the website and clean it out. Gold farmers like to creep into the forums at night and spam it up, so that has to be watched on a daily basis. Other than that, there's the usual crowd of onlookers with questions, and folks with feedback for improvements.

Mainly the craziest bats I get mail from are angry parents that 'want this World of Warcraft business off their credit card', and the folks from Pakistan that are seriously convinced that we are in the market for some leather armor. Of course, there's the financial side of things, but I just let everyone talk to my right-hand man, Google. I'm not about to let my baby be fuglied up with some garish corporate sponsors or sell-out deals involving ogres with questionable intentions.

I know what you're thinkin'. No big deal Cob, goblinworkshop.com is right fancy, but have you seen what the gnomes are fielding?. Yeah, I've seen what they got. I gotta respect their engineering, but there's a reason Daisy comes 'round OUR hut, if you know what I mean? What good is arriving in first place, if you can't do it in style?

Cheers!

-Cob (cob@goblinworkshop.com)

Biography:

Cob lives in Portland, Oregon with his awesome girlfriend Ceige and their vast army of furry minions. In addition to being a one-man coder behind goblinworkshop.com, he can be frequently be found in Orgrimmar bouncing on the bank roof or humping the damage meter. His other hobbies include MUD programming, linocut printmaking, forum trolling, taunting GuildWars zealots in IRC and planning the next great american indy vapor-ware game. During the daytime he masquerades as a database developer for a small web-host while finishing up his Bachelors Degree in Art.