The Gnomes are revolting on the official forums! Also, some of them are mad. Lead by Gnomium of the Aggramar server, they are demanding that they be included in the opening cinematic for WoTLK. It is certainly true that they haven't really had their chance in the sun for the past 2 major cinematics, although to be fair, the Trolls didn't get much more than a quick flash across the screen. Still, I can get behind this, and not just because I like my ankles non-bitten. Give them some Gnomish love, eh Blizzard? Maybe even let one use an engineering trinket without backfiring! Or, you know, just give us a tableau of Lake Wintergrasp with Gnomes being loaded into catapults and flung at the advancing Horde, either way.

Of course, we can't really have the WoTLK Cinematic be all Gnome all the time, so how do they fill the rest of it? I have to say, there's potential here. We'll probably need a massive army of Scourge, seething masses of ghouls dotted with the odd abomination or meat wagon. Perhaps we could see a group of adventurers descending into Azjol-Nerub only to be set upon by a platoon of vicious Nerubians. For the amazingly, unbelievably epic win, we could even feature a Blue Dragon vs. Red Dragon battle, since apparently Alexstraza herself will be helping us stop Malygos' mad plans to control all magic in the world. We'll probably also need at least one or two scenes of a "rebel" Death Knight fighting the scourge or breaking free of Arthas' control.

What do you think? What other scenes would you like to see in assuredly soon-to-be-released (We hope) FMV cinematic for WoTLK?

I'd seen the opening cinematic of the Burning Crusade about 20 or 30 times (including in hilarious Gnome form), but after finally installing and repatching the expansion yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised when Illidan's voice spoke to me from beyond the portal, and the intro movie played out in fullscreen, high-resolution glory. By the time "You are not prepared!" showed up again, I was ready for some Warcraft.

And just in case you want to see it one more time, Drysc offers the following tip on the forums: Whether or not the movie shows up is controlled by a small file in the WTF folder (in your World of Warcraft install) on your computer called config.wtf. Just open that file up in Wordpad (or your text editor of choice. Change the "SET movie" line in there from "0" to "1", save the file, and you're ready to watch it all again whenever you start up the game.

Of course, if you're as cool as me, and you bought the Collector's Edition, you can also find the cinematic (along with lots of extras) on the included DVD-- in fact, it's the first thing you see when you put it in. But it's good to know that if you need to watch the movie in its computery glory, you can.