Ok, let me just put my opinion here like another drop of water to this ocean. If Blizzard is taking notes, well, here is mine:
Pandas are ridiculous, obnoxious, out of place, immersion breaking ambulant player toon menaces. I don’t mean to offend no one who likes the race, plays a panda, especially not those who like their lore. That I can give a pass. Please just ignore me, It’s not personal. Try to understand, as I will explain more.
Blizzard, don’t give me that crap “there was pandas planned since earlier Warcraft or so”. It began as an inside office joke and made WoW, not a parody, but a corrosive satire of itself. Botched the image of the game. Oh, but WoW always had a wacky sense of humour. Yes! That is part of the game, a little charm. But you didn’t say anything about goblins introduced as a playable race in Cataclysm, and they’re ludicrous as Scrooge McDuck, oh yeah, but there are boundaries. Goblins were present since Warcraft ii, with the very same idiosyncrasies. I quit WoW because of MoP. I didn’t even watch the movie at the cinema at the time because I was disappointed. No, I was very noobish back then, didn’t have much clue about game mechanics and wasn’t affected by it as people are saying they were right now with the advent of Cataclysm. My personal bad blood is with the pandas. You could have followed an Elder Scrollesque path, made humans with slant eyes, a strange subtype of elf, humanoid dragons (take a clue from Square), why not? It would appease the chinese market you were so eager to please. I don’t understand how a stupid thing like that is supposed to be a compliment. Is this cultural misunderstanding of mine? Dude, I live in a melting pot of cultures, right at the border between Brazil and Uruguay, had many interactions with chinese migrants, I bet an arm they wouldn’t be sympathetic to this, just find it dumb and stereotypical. Not racist, no, just dumb. Why not monkeys looking like the Planet of the Ape humanoids? For God’s sake, JOURNEY TO THE WEST.
Death to Kung-fu Panda. /rant
So, as for my opinion I’m fine with: 1-Classic+, 2- TBC then WoTLK ending, 3- going a new route like a true parallel game universe WoW (seems like a exciting prospect if you do your best to align the playerbase wishes) or 4- just mere sad stagnation. Classic brought back what I wanted, WoW being true to it’s origins. I may sound like just a panda colossal hater, but these new expansions were full of baits, to say that is an understatement. All the hype for the Garrosh’s time travel, could have split realities, theories here and there frustrated, Sylvannas goes cuckoolander because it was written so (no truly good reasons), etc. The lore since Cataclysm began to decay and so did the game mechanics. Thankfully you heard the community and gave us Classic servers. Let us follow a new path and I ask kindly, hear us and ask for advice from the old guys retired from the office. Many veterans re-created Classic as it is stated in your propaganda, re-hire old Blizz staff, double their paycheck if needed (believe me, we will pour in like ants into candy and raise your profits by a huge margin, there’s no loss), fill them in the situation, show them the customer feedback. In order to advance, this time we all need to go back.