If you roll a Worgen character in Cataclysm you start out as a human, but pretty early in the starter zone you get scratched and turn into a Worgen. I should possibly have put BIG SPOILER tags in there, but there are a couple of clues in the character creator, like the fact that you select “Worgen”, and get to tweak your fur colour and face-growliness.
You do start out human, though, an innocent defender of the town of Gilneas with no idea of what horrors are to come…
I say “no idea”, from the player names in the Worgen starter zone you’d think the NPCs might get ever so slightly suspicious. “Hello Blackfang, you completely normal human, help save us from these wolf-type-things! Lycanfury, greetings you entirely human townsperson, please come to our aid! Werewolf27? That’s an… unusual name for a human with no wolf-like tendencies at all, but the town needs all the defenders it can get! Yes, including you W0lfmannnBiteBiteGrrr, I presume that’s an old school nickname or something. Hello, TeamJacobOutOfTwilight, please help… hang on, no, we have some standards. GET OUT!”
“Worgen Freeman?! I’d tell you to leave, but by golly we could use your comforting dulcet voice around here right now.”
Zoso, no matter how bad a day I am having, you consistently manage to come up with something that makes me laugh out loud.
Thank you for that :)
“Christopher Worgen? Thank God, you’re here! We’ve been over run by ghosts. And ghosts…scare me.”
They’re probably used to it. I mean, Greymane, is it a reference to the fact* that their hair goes prematurely grey? Or something more sinister? Frankly I think NPCs just don’t judge by names; otherwise they’d have some serious identity issues, based on having the exact same name as dozens or even hundreds of others. I’m assuming that they don’t have undisplayed surnames, so in fact Orgrimmar Grunt is actually Ogrimmar Grunt Jones, the sixth.
* that I just made up
‘Worgen Freeman’ takes the cake.