While we didn't get the full fledged Maelstrom expansion that some people were predicting, Cataclysm still promises to have some water-related content, such as the Abyssal Maw, the elemental plane of water. And where there's water, you need a boat. The recent Twitter developer chat revealed that we will, in fact, be using new transports to get to certain places in Cataclysm, and that these transport would be submarines, built by the gnomes and goblins for their respective factions.

Now, submarines aren't new to the World of Warcraft. The gnomes used them in the second war, and you can build them as a sea-faring battle unit in Warcraft II. In more recent uses, there is a makeshift goblin "submarine" in Venture Bay that is essentially a space rocket on its side, though I'd imagine the new submarines will look a bit less slapdash.

As to where exactly the subs will go, it wasn't said, but I'm banking on the Abyssal Maw area, or similar areas thereabouts. Zeppelins and ships already have most of Azeroth covered, so it's likely we'll be seeing a few new islands in Cataclysm as docking points for our awesome new subs.