Why should you care about some former dev when you could be debating about Sylvanas? He offers some behind the scenes insight on designing the game.
Ghostcrawler closes with a general observation on Mists of Pandaria marketing, wishing that Pandaria wasn’t totally branded as an expansion around the Pandaren. While he doesn’t go into reasons, one could surmise this could be due to the ‘lol panda’ memes overshadowing the nuance of the story, or how major themes of the expansion were poorly conveyed through marketing, such as the Alliance/Horde conflict and Garrosh’s character development.
He also reveals that the Mogu were a pretty last-minute addition because the villains were getting repetitive, which is interesting to hear following BFA as the Mogu made a surprise appearance in Zandalar.
The reception is also likely the reason they’ve gone out of their way to double down on how metal the first impression of each expansion has been since.
Anecdotal evidence as it is, I recall one of my friends referring to MoP dismissively as “Pandaland” and all we did was hang out with drunk pandas. This is the reaction Blizzard likely tried to avoid, which was why every press statement about WoD had th word “Savage” in it.
Isn’t Ghostcrawler the one who has regrets over how playable pandaren were introduced, and that he would never want a bi-faction race again? Sounds like he has a lot of issues with MoP. Which is weird to hear, since I think they did a great job with it. It’s probably my second favorite expansion, third at most.
Well, I bet they look back on WoD and probably wish it were pandaland. You cannot help how expansions will be received. Wrath and Vanilla did something right; recapturing that seems impossible or rather that people’s nostalgia won’t let them see any expansion worthy of the past.
Having a fantastically hard time checking, but apparently he wasn’t a fan of the bi-faction race but Blizzard didn’t want to deny everyone Pandaren. He states they did love MoP itself but overestimated how much people liked Pandaren.
I can’t help but think that was just an unavoidable side effect of the time. If Kung Fu Panda hadn’t been somewhat relevent at the time (iirc, MoP was around the time they were doing the sequel and tv series), I doubt as many people would have batted an eye at Pandaren in a game that’s had talking cows and bears since launch
Probably. He does go on to say they if they wanted an Asian theme continent, they should have just done that instead of branding the entire expansion around them.
Again I feel like the perception MoP had initially was why the “Savage people in a Savage World!” marketing they used for WoD. “Never again will people think our expansions are kiddy stuff!”
MoP was one of my least favorite expansions. It is the Expac I spent the least time with an active subscription. I don’t think Pandas had much to do with my disdain. So it makes me feel like hindsight is not always 20/20, and can be colored by personal bias. Even among Developers. As if simply accepting popular jokes is an easy way to ignore the real problems.
I guess it was a common complaint and a running joke, all the kiddie Kung Fu Pandaland stuff. But I don’t mind Pandas so much. It was the rest of the Expac that sucked, imo.
Jinyu? Hozen? Bleh. Both were non-panda natives that were not very interesting and kinda gross. flinging monkeys and fish people. Ick. They didn’t make my initial experience enjoyable on either Faction.
The art style was too flamboyant. And narratively, swimming in shallow themes gets old. And being part of Garrosh’s Racially Focused plans didn’t give me even a semblance of interest in playing Horde. I didn’t start playing with any interest until the Siege of Orgrimmar, when the Horde turned against Garrosh, and we started to get more of a connection between Pandaria and the universe we have already been playing in.
I could go on and more in depth. I really disliked MoP, and not because of Pandas or Kung Fu Panda or a Cartoony vibe. To see a developer say such things makes me feel like they didn’t learn their lesson at all.
The fact that BfA proved to be a step by step replay of MoP with a few names swapped around is further proof that they simply thought MoP needed edge, and over looked all the other problems.
From my understanding, they’ll never add actual high elves because they already gave the Horde blood elves.
Now if only they stopped you know…sticking High Elves all over the place we wouldn’t have had the dumpster fire show until we got void elves…which they still screwed up by making them defected blood elves lmao.
Makes you wonder what the original villains were going to be in place of the Mogu, because the Mogu had a pretty significant role in Pandaria, not even counting the Thunder King and his whole patch. Most of the max level Vale quests were about Mogu, the first raid was a vault of the mogu, pretty much all of Pandaria’s backstory regarding how the pandaren came to be the primary race centered around the oppression by the mogu.
Which is still weird because Pandaria wasn’t lacking in villain races, even without the mogu. You had the sha obviously but also the saurok, the mantid, the yangol, heck even the vermin. Makes you wonder how “late” the mogu were really added for them to have as many art assets and backstory importance as they do now.
I came back to WoW at the tail end of MoP. I’m indifferent about it. Never got a panda passed lv20 I think and couldn’t get into monk. Wrath is still my favorite expansion.
flinging monkeys and fish people. Ick. They didn’t make my initial experience enjoyable on either Faction.