I don't even feel like making fun about it. Honestly I tried to come up with something. But there's simply nothing I could say or do to make it worse then Blizzard already did. When this was announced I looked at the date just to make sure it wasn't the first of April. I know there are many people out there who like the Pandarene. But really?

Whats wrong with it?

World of Warcraft: serious buisness.

Honestly, if you think Pandaria is going to be the central element in the expansion, you've only half been paying attention. Pandaria isn't the story; it is where the story will HAPPEN. Full scale war is coming and I can not wait. I just hope it delivers.

As if WoW was always a serious game for serious people.

Best expansion they could possibly do. LOVE goofy Warcraft.

@Hailinel said:

As if WoW was always a serious game for serious people.

haha, exactly.

@DonPixel said:

@Hailinel said:

As if WoW was always a serious game for serious people.

haha, exactly.

I have encountered too many serious people in that game... Serious, stupid people.

So your complaint is that it has pandas. Did you just skim over everything else they're adding because you're so outraged about this new race that doesn't effect your high level character at all?
 
Bravo.

@thehexeditor said:

@DonPixel said:

@Hailinel said:

As if WoW was always a serious game for serious people.

haha, exactly.

I have encountered too many serious people in that game... Serious, stupid people.

That's another good way to put it.

So somewhere between mechanical ostrich mounts and humanoid pandas, a line was drawn.

Is this going to be full priced? I would buy it if it was like $29.99. I thought they talked about doing smaller expansions.

As if WoW was always a serious game for serious people.

You don't like panadas so it's sad? Maybe you've never paid attention to Warcraft but they fit in perfectly.

I stopped playing right before Ruby Sanctum and crap came out in Wrath, then started up for about 2 weeks when cata came out. It was alright but was definitely just more WoW. I am actually pretty excited about this expansion though. As long as it has good end game. Only thing I am worried about is some stuff I have seen on the new talent tree. They already dumbed it down a ton from what it was which I liked. But as long as they don't fuck up that to bad I will probably pick up the exp pack, play for about 2 months and do the endgame. Then quit. I seriously doubt it will be "the end of WoW" since even if they lost half of their subscribers they would still have more then most MMOs. Then they could just go F2P and jumped back up to 10 million and continue raking in the cash until they release the new MMO they are working on. No matter what WoW wont die until Blizzard decides its time for it to die.

I think the people who say WoW isn't serious haven't played it very much (not saying everyone who thinks that hasn't played it). Yeah there's a whole lot of goofy shit in the questing and silly mounts/npc's, hell, I always have a Horde balloon attached to my orc's wrist. But when you get down to the core of the story, and the real and important characters, it's actually pretty serious. With the world getting destroyed, the elements out of control. Thrall abandoning the Horde to save the world, and his replacement Garrosh tearing the horde races apart, almost causing civil war. Azeroth's resources have vastly been depleted, the Horde and alliance are fighting and breaking the peace treaty just for lumber. There's a lot of backstabbing, betrayal, etc etc. So like I said, when you get to the heart of the actual story, it is a pretty serious one, but that's not to say it doesn't have it's fair share of silliness ( which i actually enjoy)

....god I'm such a nerd. I haven't even played WoW in months, but I love the books and short stories.

I never joke about WoW.....yeah i do

@Jason_Bourne said:

I think the people who say WoW isn't serious haven't played it very much (not saying everyone who thinks that hasn't played it). Yeah there's a whole lot of goofy shit in the questing and silly mounts/npc's, hell, I always have a Horde balloon attached to my orc's wrist. But when you get down to the core of the story, and the real and important characters, it's actually pretty serious. With the world getting destroyed, the elements out of control. Thrall abandoning the Horde to save the world, and his replacement Garrosh tearing the horde races apart, almost causing civil war. Azeroth's resources have vastly been depleted, the Horde and alliance are fighting and breaking the peace treaty just for lumber. There's a lot of backstabbing, betrayal, etc etc. So like I said, when you get to the heart of the actual story, it is a pretty serious one, but that's not to say it doesn't have it's fair share of silliness ( which i actually enjoy)

....god I'm such a nerd. I haven't even played WoW in months, but I love the books and short stories.

Everything in WoW has an element of nerdy goofyness to it. There's a Futurama reference in the Icecrown raid, after all. Having serious themes isn't the same as taking yourself seriously. Blizzard knows they need to balance the dark with the light, which is why Horde got Goblins in the midst of a fairly downer storyline in Cata. So the Pandas are the Goblins of the next expansion. They are there to offset what I hope will be a pretty dark story featuring a fair amount of death and sacrifice. I predict we will lose some big lore figures in MoP, which makes sense, since we've lost major lore figures in the last two expansions.

Haters gonna hate.
 
Its so awesome seeing people claim Blizzard is failing when they still got millions of subs going, blind hate FTW!

The only thing I remember from my years of playing WoW is that everyone on the Horde listened to Metal and were into LARP, and everyone in the Alliance listened to Trance and kept talking about "that new upcoming MMO I'm switching to because WoW is dying".

I wonder what the panda people will listen to. Polka?

what exactly is wrong with it?   Pandaren race was in the universe since Warcraft 3.

Totally agree, this latest expansion just seems lazy. I mean you go from fighting this ancient evil in the form of a world eating dragon god to...FUCK YEAH PANDAS. Seriously Blizzard, this is how you wanted to end it....seriously? I'm also finding the stereotypical 'oh Pandas come from China, so lets make everything hella Chinese braaa' a tintsy bit racist at this point. Chinese people are about more than just pandas, red lanterns, kungfu and ancient wisdomfrom the far east- I thought we’d moved past all that.

I stopped caring about the Warcraft universe after WC2 (loved the "tone" of this game). There was already too much weird and cute bullshit going on in WC3 and then they piled on fucktons of garbage with WoW and made Warcraft uncrecognizable from what it once was.

@Moreau_MD: for what it's worth, for someone who is playing the game (I'm not sure if you do), I find it extremely refreshing to get away from the tired way they've been making expansions focused on some big bad guy. A bad guy you won't even get to fight for most of 1½ years.

Also, personally, I think that Deathwing has been rather underwhelming so far, compared to what I was expecting - he's hardly a "world eating dragon".

For what it's worth, Pandaren was, apparently, given as much room in the Warcraft pen and paper RPG book (back in 2003) as trolls. http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/204384/my-honest-reaction-to-the-pandas. Check out Bashiok's posts in that thread. Just sayin', The Pandas in Warcraft aren't exactly... a new idea?

And since when is making something Asian-inspired racist? Is Rocko's Modern World racist? I mean, he's a Kangaroo from Australia...?

For what it's worth, Pandaria is apparently located in the far south of the world. Ancient wisdom from the far south?

@august said:

World of Warcraft: serious buisness.

Exactly my thought. People seem to think that World of Warcraft and it's lore is as serious, realistic and grim as cancer. I, for one, love everything about this expansion pack.

If they would have announced "World of Warcraft: Fate of the Emerald Dream" or "World of Warcraft: Revenge of the Burning Crusade," I don't think I'd go back. But pandas and a whimsical, creative new direction? Fuck ya, I'll gladly resub for a month and work my way through that content.

@Marz said:

what exactly is wrong with it? Pandaren race was in the universe since Warcraft 3.

Apparently it's too kid friendly or some dumb shit. You know, against the bright colorful Night & Blood elves and the silly gnomes & goblins, pandas are just taking it far. It's your standard video game forum affair. Ya know, the kind where company X doesn't do something they like so instead of moving on with their life, they rage because that's the only way they know how to cope with things.

I've never played WoW, but here's this: 

I'd take panda dudes over space goats if I had the choice.

Honestly, I would take pandas over werewolves too.

There's nothing wrong with it. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet, don't buy it, and move on.

Big deal.

Panda hater!

As an adult who has been playing WoW since vanilla, I think MoP is one of the best things Blizzard has ever come up with for the game. And personally I think its very ignorant and somewhat insulting when people talk about the game as if the creativity is long gone from it, or as Jeff Gertsmann put it ''Its best minds have moved on..''. That could not be further from the truth. If anything ever since the first expansion, the game has improved dramatically in every single aspect; it is now much bigger, better looking, more accessible, more playable, more varied, more rewarding and just more fun to play. And MoP seems to continue that trend: a cool looking new race, a huge new continent with beautiful and distinct art style, a new class (which is fucking awesome news but for some reason no one is even talking about it), completely redesigned talent system to finally make talents interesting, new end-game content variety that isn't just raiding, and some Pokemanz thrown in for good measure!

I'm super excited for this expansion. I've been taking a break from the game last couple months but I'll definitely be going back to the game soon, probably when patch 4.3 and the new raid finder go live.

@Hailinel said:

As if WoW was always a serious game for serious people.

it's serious as cancer

Who can keep the average dancer

Hyper as a heart attack, nobody smiling

Cause you're expressing the rhyme that I'm styling

@isbecome: Apparently, originally, the Pandaren was set to be the Alliance race for the Burning Crusade. So you aren't far off there :P

@DexterKid: Yeah, pretty much agree with you across the board.

I think the key thing people don't get is... It's ok if you don't like WoW anymore, but don't try to convince everyone else how wrong they are for not agreeing with you.

@FunExplosions: That's an great image ;)

The panda's aren't the only thing that's coming with the expansion, the new continent is supposed to be the place where the conflict between the horde and alliance will come to a head. Some of the stuff they've been talking about sounds awesome. It's fucking Blizzard, they'll find a way to make it awesome. I do feel like if they put some of the other stuff in with that teaser, they could have softened the backlash a little.

I don't see why everyone is upset about it. Just can't keep hardcore fans happy it seems. I'll probably hop in for a couple months when it comes out and check out the new stuff. WoW isn't something I can play for a very long time but I certainly enjoy the time I do spend with it.

Also, I don't know where this notion came from that Blizz was going to start putting out smaller expansions. I never heard such a thing. I just remember them saying they wanted to release content faster than before to keep people playing. And from everything they've shown of MoP, it does not look 'small' by any stretch of the imagination.

@TooWalrus said:

The panda's aren't the only thing that's coming with the expansion, the new continent is supposed to be the place where the conflict between the horde and alliance will come to a head. Some of the stuff they've been talking about sounds awesome. It's fucking Blizzard, they'll find a way to make it awesome. I do feel like if they put some of the other stuff in with that teaser, they could have softened the backlash a little.

Yeah. Too bad there's no more Alliance on my server. They made sure of that when they introduced faction change. So who are we going to fight?

Oh, more people whining about pandas? Entertaining! I love pandas.

PANDAS? IN MY WORLD ABOUT MAGIC AND ORCS AND ELVES? 
 
NOT ON MY FUCKING WATCH

I think that it's fucking awesome. Can't wait to play it, I'm renewing my subscription for it when it does come out.

I've never played WoW, so giving an outsiders opinion, it looks kind of retarded to me.

@Deleth said:

@TooWalrus said:

The panda's aren't the only thing that's coming with the expansion, the new continent is supposed to be the place where the conflict between the horde and alliance will come to a head. Some of the stuff they've been talking about sounds awesome. It's fucking Blizzard, they'll find a way to make it awesome. I do feel like if they put some of the other stuff in with that teaser, they could have softened the backlash a little.

Yeah. Too bad there's no more Alliance on my server. They made sure of that when they introduced faction change. So who are we going to fight?

1 - roll on a new server where the Alliance to Horde ratio isnt 24% / 76% Horde biased.

2 - Alliance vs Horde does not mean it's a PVP focused expansion. In questing, horde players will fight Alliance NPCs.

3 - Seriously, switch freaking servers. You can level to 85 in like a month, now.

How dare they besmirch the honorable name of World of Warcraft? My immersion in the world of Azaroth is ruined! RUINED!

T'Lardenfiel the level 87 Night Elf warrior will NOT be partaking in this epic quest, Blizzard! You've gone too far!

@aButton said:

How dare they besmirch the honorable name of World of Warcraft? My immersion in the world of Azaroth is ruined! RUINED!

T'Lardenfiel the level 87 Night Elf warrior will NOT be partaking in this epic quest, Blizzard! You've gone too far!

haha. if he's level 87, he's already taken part in it. :P

I think it was an awesome move to switch from a big baddy expansion story, to a war story. As far as lore is concern, there are only so many things you can kill, before, it gets to the dbz level of craziness. Now if they can pull it off, is iffy, but at least they are trying to do something different. I just hope the update outlands and northern since those areas are now out of date (by quite a bit).

@BionicRadd: The way I see it, this expansion is a Chinese themed vacation for the developers. Despite raking in tons of dough and having seemingly generous schedules, I have reason to believe that they are burned out on certain thematic tones and gameplay elements after the ass end of Wrath and Cata. The talent changes are an effort to simplify the neverending issue of balancing the impossible to balance game, challenge-mode dungeons and scenarios are to shift the endgame focus away from the "We do all this motherfucking work for only a small percentage of people out of the whole to experience content", and the new locale, race, and class are a fresh break from the sometimes cloyingly "badass" or "epic" nature of the Scourge, Cataclysm, Firelands arcs.

Also, one of their main goals is to put the "World" back into WoW. Cataclysm was step 1 with rebuilding the entire world and allowing flying across it as well as the half-assed Archaeology activity. MoP is step 2 and beyond.. As Tom Chilton said during the Blizzcon panel- I'm sure we're all tired of staying in Stormwind or Orgrimmar all the fucking time. He didn't say "fucking", but I felt a need to add that.

@thehexeditor: I agree, completely, except that Pandaria WILL have a big bad. Blizzard has said as much. They just arent going to put him on the box, this time. So for the first half of the expansion, we are going to get an Alliance / Horde war. On the back end, probably the very last patch, we'll get a bad ass raid boss and a crap ton of stuff that happens. Basically, they are going back to how things worked in Vanilla where we never had any idea what was coming from one big raid patch to the next. My biggest problem with Cata was that I loved the conflict between Horde and Alliance in the new 1-60 zones and really couldn't care less about what we're doing in the 80-85 zones. Knowing that we're going to pick up some of those story threads in MoP excites the hell out of me.

So somewhere between mechanical ostrich mounts and humanoid pandas, a line was drawn.

@BionicRadd said:

1 - roll on a new server where the Alliance to Horde ratio isnt 24% / 76% Horde biased.

2 - Alliance vs Horde does not mean it's a PVP focused expansion. In questing, horde players will fight Alliance NPCs.

3 - Seriously, switch freaking servers. You can level to 85 in like a month, now.

1 - most pvp servers here have much more Horde then Alliance. I'm in favor of forcing people to play Alliance! (Of course not me, my alt is enough!)

2 - Alliance vs Horde for me means it's PvP. Otherwise it's the same thing just with Alliance skins instead of shadow hammer.

3 - Don't wanna. My guild is there, the people I know and my chars. Some of them have quite a few achievments and mounts.

@LordXavierBritish said:

So your complaint is that it has pandas. Did you just skim over everything else they're adding because you're so outraged about this new race that doesn't effect your high level character at all? Bravo.

This. And since when were the Pandaren a new thing? They've been around since Warcraft 2. WoW is almost 7 years old, it's okay for it to take a sillier path for ONE expansion.