We've heard of people trying to play as pacifists in World of Warcraft, but there wasn't a lot of support for it in the game. A lot of the experience was earned from holiday events, battleground dailies, profession dailies, items with repeatable quests, and collection quests scattered across the game. If they played a healer, this was much easier as they could heal dungeons and battlegrounds without participating in the actual killing themselves.
Blizzard added another way to earn some experience with the latest patch for Cataclysm. You now earn experience when both gathering from mining and herbalism nodes. This is being reported about 4,000 experience for herb nodes in Wintergrasp at level 80. However, these do suffer from the same experience reduction that lower level quests are hit with. As an example, a level 83 player mining a copper node earns 5 experience, but earns a couple thousand from a titanium node.
Originally Posted by Daeleht (Source)
This is an intentional change, however the values may not be final. Tradeskill nodes are intended to give you experience when you loot them.
Not ruling dwarf out, though, just in case. I'm pretty sure I'll love the goblin girls. What I've seen they look like such sassy, spunky things! But, in case there is something about them that just drives me nuts, she'll be a dwarf. But, yes, otherwise. Goblin lass with engineering, working towards "Professor" 
