A note: the worgen area is not finished yet, so my response is to something that is still getting a lot of work.
The worgen are one of the things I'm most excited about in the expansion. There's a huge amount of lore associated with them, and Gilneas has fascinated me since I found out about it being a locked area for so long. There was a post on WoW_Ladies about a year ago where someone had (admittedly illegally) utilized a bug and gotten behind the wall in Gilneas to see what was there. Since it wasn't implemented yet, there was really nothing, but it was still cool to know that there was land back there that could be used for something.
Making a Worgen is a bit odd at this point. For one, you canonly makes males (booooo), and they haven't added the part where you can preview your human form. The current news (from a blue post on the alpha/beta forums) is that you will not be able to tweak both your human and your Worgen form. Instead, each characteristic in your Worgen form will be connected with a characteristic in your human form, much like how a druid's hair color determines the color of their bear/cat form when they shapeshift. As of right now, though, you roll your Worgen (which has an awesome design screen) and get the human that comes with it. Mine didn't look too bad, so I just went with it.
The racial cinematic isn't finished yet, but even without the voiceover it gives you chills. You pan over the haunted-feeling city, gray skies and trees stripped bare with the new music playing in the background, which just adds to the creepy feel. When you reach the rooftops, you start to see dark forms hovering over the small English-type cobblestone streets, just waiting to jump down and rip people to shreds. Then the camera dips into the center of town, where you and the few survivors who haven't yet been infected by the curse are gathered, trying to escape while saving as many people as you can.
As Shaun (Tzirik) said, the Gilneans are/were human nobility, and Blizzard definitely modeled everything off that. The NPC men currently speak like the human men in Stormwind, no accent, same lines and all. But the NPC women have an English accent, more Cockney/borgeousie than London upperclass. However, the female Worgen have a very polished accent (from the videos released on YouTube... I'll link below), and methinks that Blizzard is trying to create some of the same class diviisons in Gilneas that existed in London in the time period they're modeling this after. Even your starting items are made to emulate the English upper-class: the caster robes look like a white shirt and black very with a long robe thrown over it, and the melee gear is similar, but with pants instead of a robe. I'm interested to see what the females get; I'm hoping they get somethign similar and not just some knock-off of the generic "serving wench" style clothes that are already in the game.
As starting areas go, it's fairly similar, except you have an actual storyline to follow instead of simply being sent out to farm mats for lazy people. At this moment, you don't know you're going to become a Worgen: you know that getting bitten is what causes you to turn, but you're still trying to survive. The Worgen running around the city are not the type you are going to turn into; they have no sense of their lost humanity, and have given themselves over completely to the curse. You have no choice but to fight them, and so you do! The ones right around the starting area are neutral, something I do NOT agree with, but it is a starting area, so i can't complain too much.
I won't go into too much detail about the quests, because I don't want to ruin everything for you. However, I will say that, although it is not quite as epic as the death knight starter quests, it's up there. At one point you get a debuff called "Infected wound" (or something similar), and the description mentions that hair is starting to grow around the outside edges, a hint of your impending fate. You finish the epic questline, go to turn in the quest, and prepare for the transformation...
... which isn't done yet. Instead, you get a nice little message from Blizzard: "This is where we'll play the video of you turning into a worgen, but it's not done yet!" You get a loading screen, and then you're bent over in the stocks, fully in Worgen form, and about to be executed. Luckily, you saved an alchemist who has created a potion that allows you to keep your mind, but you retain your Worgen form (Snape, Lupin, Wolfsbane, Harry Potter, anyone? You even have to get him mandrake root [yes, I know, mandrake root in HP is to unfreeze people who saw the basilisk, but it's pretty much a direct reference]).
And that's where I stopped, because (as it is a beta) one of the quests was planned poorly and took over an hour to complete. Unfortunately they do not screen for idiots when they choose people for beta keys, so just as many exist there as they do in the regular game, and it is twice as bad because half the stuff is buggy. Add the two together, and the wank is ridiculous.
So, links to the voices:
Male Worgen flirts
Female worgen Flirts
Male Worgen jokes
Female Worgen jokes
*A note on the jokes/flirts: A lot of them are really racy, and probably won't make it to the game. So enjoy while you can!
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