No chainsaws. Eze has a somewhat misguided notion of what is involved with grinding hooves.
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Her rotten, ravishing heart is in the right place, love. A chainsaw has much better uses that I can think of. I will speak with her, she can take her aggression out on me. No, no. Do not fret for me darling, I bear this responsibility willingly.
/tentacleflip
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I did not mind them at all, a fine addition to the WoW races.
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I loved them.
Still do.
Great culture, good food, and battles worth fighting.
Also, Li Li for Warchief.
Hmmm I don’t think so. Chinese-WoW is completey different than US-WoW, I doubt they added pandas just to appease that audience. And you know, based an entire expansion around it.
As to the OP, I’m sort of indifferent on pandas. Male pandas are an abomination; but female ones can be kind of cute sometimes, depends on the mog. Overall more choice is always better, especially when it comes to races.
Pandaren actually predate Kung Fu Panda.
They were a “joke” race, so putting them in the game was pretty dumb.
It would be like putting in Murlocs; Of COURSE people would PLAY the Murlocs some, or have them as alts, but no one is going to really main a Murloc.
I made one that I was going to try to get to level 20/whatever, for the mount # for my other characters. I think I could stand to get it to level six, then stopped.
I also discovered, around then, that I could just wear the Tushi tabard and do the botonica over and over until they were exalted, so I did that instead on this character.
Depends on what you mean by “predate.”
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria/Initial release date
September 25, 2012
Kung Fu Panda/Release date
June 6, 2008
The Pandaren April Fools was a 2003 April Fools joke
I hated MoP when it was released. I took my longest break from WoW because of it. However, I started really looking at the xpac and how much work was put into it. MoP had so much content and it was good content. I also got over my panda aversion. Now I have one from each faction to max level.
Pandaren are great and MoP was the best expansion.
That’s how I feel about them.
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It’s pretty funny to see not just WOW but any bear-like figures getting banned in China, simply because the leader of the country feels insecure about his body weight and suspects people making fun of him fat like a bear. Even winnie-the-pooh is banned in China.
If I were him, I would go on a diet and exercise though.
The reviews were extremely mixed, given than MoP was an ENORMOUS change in pace from what every expansion had given us thus far. Back then, there was an expectation of each expansion topping the previous expansion. The threats had to get bigger. After Wrath, we didn’t know what could be more threatening than Arthas, until they introduced Deathwing which is a being that literally broke the world.
And right after we fight off a world-ending threat, we get Pandas… Are you serious (some of us thought)?? Pandas?? Why make a whole continent dedicated to dumb bouncing pandas? Why not make it a patch?
Many of us (myself included) thought it was complete filler; just a thing Blizzard is using to prolong the game. In the forums there were people defending the Pandaren, saying they rather like the change in tone and they look fun, but I was not impressed at all. I saw a video of Temple of the Jade Serpent and thought it looked too Chinese; like tacky Chinese.
Honestly, I’m glad I was wrong. I’m glad MoP didn’t turn out to be a tacky filler panda story, but instead explored some heavy themes about the cost of war, on ourselves and the natives around us. I was sold after The Thunder King patch that MoP could truly be a great expansion that deserves the same respect as its predecessors.
The forums didn’t like them, but people in game loved them and I saw them everywhere.
I didn’t like them and I still don’t like them. I skipped MoP after a few months because the expansion itself was cheesy and childish. It’s a very overrated expansion that was panned at the time but everyone talks about it like it was the second coming because that’s around the time many people here started playing.
I was absolutely ecstatic about Pandaren. I still love them today even. However, they weren’t very well received when they were released. Mostly due to poor timing. Due to MoP being announced around the same time Kung Fu Panda 2 was released, there was a misguided majority opinion that the whole expansion was nothing but a cash grab riding off the popularity of the Kung Fu Panda movies.
If Blizzard had opted to release Pandaren back with Wrath when they had originally planned to instead, then the view on Pandaren would have most likely been far more positive. But instead they were scrapped in Wrath and released during the peek of the popularity of Kung Fu Panda.
Did Kung Fu Panda influence design choices on MoP? Sure it did. There are quite a few pop culture references to Kung Fu Panda and various other popular Asian themed shoes & movies scattered throughout MoP. Would Pandaren have been a popular race if released in Wrath? Absolutely not, the original model design for Pandaren in Wrath was atrocious, the WC3 models looked like pure gold in comparison. I for one am glad they were scrapped in Wrath and released when they did.
They were pretty much forced to put in some real design effort for them with MoP due to the popularity of Kung Fu Panda. They knew if they released the model they were working on before that there would be a massive community backlash. So they started a new model from scratch with a higher standard of quality. A standard of quality that they later had to bring older models up to in WoD, and are now working on bringing the last 2 races up to, along with various random mobs around the map.
Yes, the rabbits and monkeys were childish but MoP had a lot of content. I think it’s more than just nostalgia.
I think it being sandwiched between two bad expansions, one particularly bad, does it a lot of favors.
I don’t think Cata was bad at all (just one bad raid) but I’ll give you WoD. I’m sure that xpac made MoP look like pure gold.
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When they were first announced it went over like a lead balloon. A LOT of people assumed it was an April Fool’s Day joke and spend all of that Blizzcon waiting for the “real” expansion announcement. It didn’t help that the first Pandaren to be introduced into WoW lore was actually an April Fool’s Day joke in Warcraft 3(iirc).
People thought it sounded silly and too “kid friendly”.
WoW lost a lot of subs before MoP even launched because people were so mad about it.
The forums were lit up for weeks with people complaining about them. Most WoW players didn’t know that the Pandaren were an already established race within the Warcraft lore so there were a lot of accusations that Blizzard was just trying to cash in on the Kung Fu Panda popularity at the time.
MoP is looked at now as being one of the last “great” WoW expansions with many people listing it right up there with Wrath as one of the best ever, but from the time it was announced right up until after the first couple of patches it was a really controversial expansion.
I thought the whole storyline of Pandaria was clever and perfect. To this day the thunder king’s palace is my favorite raid. The whole theme of the pandaren people controlling their emotions to prevent the sha from gaining power… without really noticing that the sha are the remnants of an old god was awesome.
The mantid were worshiping the old god.
The jinyu were these cool fish people who could listen to water and gain guidance.
The mogu are the ultimate aggressors and antagonist with them enslaving and conquering all who oppose them.
The hozen were a goofy race that always made me smile and sometimes chuckle. I miss Riko and hope he shows up in the story for the Horde. Riko for Warchief!
I thought the shado-pan was a cool faction, unraveling Wrathions story was interesting, finishing the karasang wilds rep to learn more about the faction war was really cool. Timeless isle was a great zone for pvp. My favorite part was when the troll invasion occurred.
This whole expansion stemmed from the pandaren. They had to think about the landmass of pandaria and where they would originate and have their origin take place. They took it a step further and also gave us a second group of pandaren from the wandering isles. Which is kind of amazing when you think this all came from a pandaren named Chen Stormstout who rexxar had to help find ingredients for (Warcraft 3). Perhaps it was a joke character. But I like to think it blossomed into a great idea that really gained its own legs and started running.
I remember them having the April fools two headed playable ogre. It was something I thought was crazy. But then we learned later on that they were debating on playable ogres for cataclysm. So what may seem like a joke then, could actually be a well thought out idea later.
Just my two copper
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Came out the same time as Kung Fu Panda, needless to say it was all the rage to make fun of them.