Eh - I’ve always taken the gender split to be a purely cultural thing. Women are amazonian warriors while men are the druids and lore keepers. Women seem to lean in a more feral tiger riding way while the men meditate, speak to their goddess and so on (side note - if we’re being honest, it seems unlikely they’d have priests any more than the Tauren originally did - the druids fill that function).
Re Mages? The entire elven civilization was ended by over use of magic, something the NE’s despised. They’re a renegade branch of eco-survivalists who’ve spent 10,000 years being immortal and adapting to life without the sun wells of the past. They rely entirely on world trees instead (well… they did).
I get why it changed in game. People want non gender locked classes and elven mages. But I also remember reading Metzen fought tooth and nail against the changes as it ruined ‘his’ idea of how the race worked.
I was there for Burning Crusade and the complaints about how they “ruined” draenei, I don’t want to hear about this “pre-established lore”. >.<
Most of Outland was new, too. Prior to TBC, what we’d seen was basically just Hellfire Peninsula.
For that matter, we’d only seen a small part of Northrend. They added the Drakkari, the entire Malygos plotline, all of the Titan nonsense, all of Grizzly Hills, and tons of smaller points.
Bear in mind (heh…good pun) that I am not speaking about any particular person including yourself.
The arguments against Pandarens seem, IMHO Perhaps, to fall mostly into two buckets:
Ridiculous to have in a fantasy setting likes wow’s that is based on European traditions and tropes.
They were added to appease the chinese player base and simply foisted off on the rest of us.
Both in my eyes boil down to at best latent societal racism and so are rejected out of hand.
The rest seem to boil down to “but they came out of no where” which is not true as Chen was in WC3. They may well have come out of obscurity but…that seems fitting for them no?
Alternatively “they are just ridiculous and I hate them” and fair enough there are people that feel that way about every race. True most of this focused around Gnomes for many years but I have known people that simply thought the inclusion of every race was ridiculous for one reason or another.
Sure, but the new stuff in TBC and WotLK is properly tied into the rest, even if through retcon. Like you could trace the lines between the Broken in Swamp of Sorrows and those in HFP/Zangarmarsh and it made sense, as did stuff like the Mag’har in Nagrand and the ruined Alliance outpost in Netherstorm. Same for titans/dwarves/gnomes/vrykul etc in WotLK… the prior story supports it all pretty nicely.
Whereas Pandaria just kinda poofed into existence with the only ties prior being Chen.
Like I said, it would’ve been a lot better if for the middle-patch of Cata we start seeing Pandaren and hearing about the troubles brought upon them by the Cataclysm. By the time MoP dropped Pandaren would’ve been much more familiar and their connection to the rest of the game wouldn’t have been as tenuous.
That wasn’t really WoW’s style back then. The only setup Cata got was one raid and that was half to tide people over who’d been running ICC too much and wanted something new before Cata was ready. And TBC → Wrath was pretty much literally necropoli dropping out of a blue sky. It didn’t seem to set those expansions back any.
Cata was a bit stilted for sure, but at least Deathwing was a known capacity from WCII and novels. In the case of WotLK there wasn’t much introduction needed because Northrend had already been a primary setting in WCIII: TFT and the influence of the Scourge had been a part of the game since day one (both through Forsaken and Tirsfal/Silverpine/Plaguelands). A lot of people even expected Northrend and the Lich King to be subjects of an expansion.
I dunno, I just think MoP could’ve been executed a lot better than it was. A lot of the initial negative reaction to was was certainly rooted its suddeness/unexpectedness.
Also the whole april fools crowd ignoring that there are a couple different easter egg areas in Reign of Chaos (for the first one anyway, not Frozen Throne, or even the Rexxar campaign that Chen is involved in) for them, one of which shows a picture of an adult male one and a cub.
These are things that would have been in the game for while, not just thrown in as ‘april fools’, just because they make a joke about adding a playable faction of them doesn’t mean what had already been in there was a joke.
Not to mention that vanilla wow has quests that directly say Pandaren exist and are canon, confirming Chen’s existence and help in the WC3 Rexxar campaign:
Well, people hate them because they look…dumb.
I think if they were muscular badass look people would like them. Imo they were intended to look dumb in the first place, because the purpose was to give the world a comedic relief race choice.
At some point however it becomes purely hypocritical when the Night Elves tolerate Khadgar and Jaina yet disapprove of their own people doing the same. I would suggest that Jaina’s parrticipation in the Battle of Hyjal was the first crack in the dam.
On a plus side, I think the lore introduced in WC 3 made the MMO what it is. It’s a great template for taking classic fantasy and giving it a 10-20% tweak to make it unique. For the majority of games, they’re either wayyyy out there (e.g. all races are made up) or DandD 101. Blizzard has orcs, elves etc but they’re instantly recognizable as Blizzard variants. It’s orcs are iconic and a different thing from Tolkiens (but still in the same rough ballpark which people feel comfortable with).
On a negative I think lore interferes with gameplay. An example would be still having race/class combos unavailable when HUGE ones have been written out in the past. Initially it made sense as wow was trying to follow a certain real world logic (e.g. races not understanding how to play certain classes, poisons needing herbs, hunters carrying arrows) but eventually a lot of these got dumped as… they’re simply not fun.
I’d argue that player fun should always trump lore. If you REALLY love taurens and want to play a rogue or warlock? You do you. You can be a special snowflake if it makes your game more enjoyable. I’d also argue that the faction balance falls under the same ‘lore says one thing but fun says another’. Playing with who you want to play with should always be first and foremost. If lore MUST be obeyed make a work around (like… a traitor option).
I made a pandaren monk just because I thought it would be cool to play MoP as one. Never did I think I’d keep playing one. But, I fell in love with the culture and lore. She just seemed so alive and a whole expansion pack behind her. Lo and behold she became my main. lol
I think it was to allow all of the Chinese player base to choose a Panda to play, not just one Faction of, being as the Panda is an international symbol for China.
I think they were a great addition. I totally loved Pandaria and honestly MOP is probably one of my most favorite expansions. It was much better than it turned out to be. The zones were fantastic and so was the story. There was some charm and a bit of humor but for the most part is was a great expansion. The addition of Panda’s was just natural for the expansion. I do like that they are neutral.
