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 deal. 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 Stonecutter guild. Armed with their sage advice, alpha access, the top-secret plans and other leet hax, I boarded my trusty zeppelin and set out on an interstellar journey in search of the rare-drop mats I would need for my vision quest.

Of course, the first implementation was painfully crude. It was painted a garish neon goblin-green. It smelled suspiciously of volatile rum, and 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 please those prissy fruit elves in the Cenarion Circle, but during those early days I personally smelted down over 16,000 screen-shots 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, 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 corporate sponsorships and 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? Yea verithly I can teach you, but I must levee a fee.

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 programmer behind goblinworkshop.com, he can be frequently be found in Orgrimmar grilling [Carrion Surprise] for orphans, or humping the damage meter on the bank roof. His other hobbies include MUD programming, linocut printmaking, forum trolling, taunting Guild Wars 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.