Originally posted by OkhamsRazor

The backlash against this is pretty huge though and maybe they will have a rethink and cancel it .

Sort of doubt it.  They're almost a year in to an eighteen month project (might be twenty-four, no official word).  Based on my guess, by now the world is beyond rough draft, building and character art is done (or almost, they said female panda isn't finished), and they're hashing out names storyline questing phasing etc.

Unless they push back, it is what it is.  Also, a few of us think the design was intentional to get publicity and the backlash expected.  I'm of this opinion myself.  The key was in an interview where the guy (?) says "and we're all on the same version internationally".  They're pumping up for a big Asian win in my opinion.  He all but said so.

i have considered Warcraft full of humor since the 1st rts game ( if nothing else, than just how goofy the peons/peasents were). more so with WC2, and poured on heavy with WC3.

go play WC3, beat it, and watch the 'comedy skit' they do through the credits. i enjoyed it years ago when i was into that game. i think it showed Kiljaden making a movie, as the director, and all they got was blooper worthy shots. like i said, it's been years, but thats what i remember. it was 100% for comic relief.

but before the game is completed, try clicking on every unit repeatedly, listen to the units, and tell me that is not for the sake of humor.

when a RTS game has this much cartoony nature and humor, why would the MMO be different?

personally, i think WOTLK was the most goofy WoW experience to date. the undead act like 10 year old on drugs.... the WoW team does a better job with mystical colorful settings than they do dark settings. personally, i prefer dark content in every aspect, but the truth is that WoW does not do it very well, and never has. WOW (for me) is about a mystical adventure of exploration. not sitting in a raid for hours, bored to death because there is more down-time than playing.

Panderia sounds like an enchanting place to explore, and i can't wait for the xpac. i haven't played WoW since a month into Cata, and this new expansion sounds like it has a lot to do. i expect it won't come out until AFTER i've been on a loooong Skyrim binge, so i thnk the timing will be perfect for me.

i will get to explore the new zones with my rogue/mage. and i will be able to make a night elf monk, something i have wanted since first subbed to the game during vanilla.

also, i LOVE asian culture and art. this is nothing but good news for me.

anyone who would quit the game EXCLUSIVELY because of the panda race, is a good loss in my opinion. it derives from such a close-minded, high-horse riding mindstate that i feel those people quitting the game, would be a great thing.

"And yes folks, I’m even okay with the Pandaren race as a whole.  I do think their current models are a little too cute and rounded for my liking, but the Pandaren are a race of creatures I’ve had a soft spot for since Warcraft III and nothing but nothing is going to stop me from playing one at least through the starting zone come launch.  Sure it’s like something right out of Kung-Fu Panda, but dammit… they’re as serious as a heart-attack (according to Chris Metzen).  I know there’s no way I’ll convince some of you that this is truth, and really it’s a style thing."

It really is a style thing, and the Pandaren race falls right in line with what WoW's style has always been.  There has always been an overarching serious storyline, but woven around that have been hundreds of silly, light-hearted, comical moments, from the adventures of Harrison Jones and Milhouse Manastorm to the exploits of the many quirky golblin and gnomish engineers.  Pandarens wouldn't *fit* in most other games, but they certainly mesh right into the world of Warcraft.  

Originally posted by grawss

Originally posted by Alalala

Alalala?  It's just a repeating sequence of the left most and right most letters on the second row of the keyboard.  Picked for convenience and means nothing.

In other words, if you consider a ludicrous image to dictate the maturity levels of those who play Pandaren, then I'll let ludicrous images decide your own maturity level. You know, using your argument against you and such.

It's almost like you're plugging your ears and chanting "alalala" to avoid actual arguments; instead relying on pictures like you've been posting to make some irrelevant point. ;)

 

By the way, I bet if you typed "Pandaren" into Google Images, you'd have a pretty hard time finding toddlers dressed in panda suits. Might as well compare apples to apples, yes?

 

I'm sorry the image of a toddler in a panda suit has made you so very upset.  The image is there to remind people of the close association the panda has with infants and children in our culture, which I believe undermines Blizzard's choice.  It has a point, and images are supported in this forum as you well know.

About 30 posts into this very topic I lay out why I think this race is a bad choice and my rejection of several arguments in favor.  I feel it presents, for a quickly written forum post, an organized and coherent point of view.  You may disagree with my perspective, but you cannot say that I am avoiding arguments as you claim.  Once again, I include another image of a kid with a toy panda to say to people: This is really poor, childish choice for Blizzard.

You will also see that I like WoW and I am generally okay with the other expansion features, which freshen up a game that needs some vitality.  (The panda race,though, is still a deal breaker.)  Anyway, you never called me a WoW Hater directly, which I recognize and appreciate.

To be honest, I really don't understand where you are going with a google image search of my meaningless forum name and how it relates to anything, so you'll pardon me if continue to ignore that rambling.  You were doing a satsifactory job across the topics defending the panda choice, but there I felt like you diminished yourself, and then went did it to yourself again after I explained it has no meaning.  And besides, that off-topic behavior is frowned upon.

On the off chance it is the use of a child in a photograph that has you so emotional, here's a picture of an adult living out his fantasy of being a panda.  It does not illustrate the association of children and pandas, but it probably still makes people think twice about how they will spend their leisure time in WoW.  I get that some people don't care and some are even passionate about being a panda.  If you own a panda suit, please do not photograph yourself and post it here to make your point that panda fantasy is ok, and that Blizzard is fine.  Simply tell me you have one and you get the win.

For whatever it's worth, I think you are all full of it, and I despise you equally regardless of your position on this issue.  As an aside, each of you deserve this expansion, and should be forced to play it. 

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Originally posted by Alalala

I'm sorry the image of a toddler in a panda suit has made you so very upset.  The image is there to remind people of the close association the panda has with infants and children in our culture, which I believe undermines Blizzard's choice.  It has a point, and images are supported in this forum as you well know.

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Oh please, don't bother with the "umad?" rhetoric; that got old before it started. Your perception of emotions aren't valid over the Internet and it only makes your posts less powerful, regardless of eloquence.

When did pandas gain an association with children? When I walk into my niece's room, I see teddy bears, tigers, giraffes, etc. By your logic, should everything in the Savannah be associated with children? By your logic, shouldn't human adults be associated with children due to franchises such as Barbie?

Just about every animal has been in some kind of extremely popular movie or has been made into a stuffed animal. You've zeroed in on Pandas, however, because World of Warcraft happened to announce them. :/

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Originally posted by Alalala

About 30 posts into this very topic I lay out why I think this race is a bad choice and my rejection of several arguments in favor.  I feel it presents, for a quickly written forum post, an organized and coherent point of view.  You may disagree with my perspective, but you cannot say that I am avoiding arguments as you claim.  Once again, I include another image of a kid with a toy panda to say to people: This is really poor, childish choice for Blizzard.

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You're right, and I did miss that post. My apologies; that was one of the few posts which does in fact outline a decent point of view. Thank you for setting the bar. :D

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Originally posted by Alalala

To be honest, I really don't understand where you are going with a google image search of my meaningless forum name and how it relates to anything, so you'll pardon me if continue to ignore that rambling.  You were doing a satsifactory job across the topics defending the panda choice, but there I felt like you diminished yourself, and then went did it to yourself again after I explained it has no meaning.  And besides, that off-topic behavior is frowned upon.

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I did it to prove a point: Anything can be made to look childish.

Go find a bunch of cow pictures and make fun of tauren. Find a bunch of cute wolf pictures to make fun of worgen. I bet you could dig up a nice cuddly dragon somewhere to say dragons are too cute for the game.

I said "apples to apples" because you're exaggerating to make a point that doesn't exist without the exaggeration. It's simple to see, really; if pandas were so associated with children and infants as you say, you wouldn't need imagery to try getting your point across. Does a five year old plugging her ears make an accurate representation of your maturity level? Of course not. And with the same logic, a baby in a panda outfit does not make an accurate representation of Pandaren.

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Originally posted by Alalala

On the off chance it is the use of a child in a photograph that has you so emotional, here's a picture of an adult living out his fantasy of being a panda.  It does not illustrate the association of children and pandas, but it probably still makes people think twice about how they will spend their leisure time in WoW.  I get that some people don't care and some are even passionate about being a panda.  If you own a panda suit, please do not photograph yourself and post it here to make your point that panda fantasy is ok, and that Blizzard is fine.  Simply tell me you have one and you get the win.

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I won't argue that Pandaren are silly, but more silly than WoW already is?

Originally posted by headphones

Originally posted by Otinashi

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Blizzard is making Wow so that it is too easy.  There is no challenge like the game used to be.  It is all about pleasing the "I want it now" crowd and I really do not want anything to do with people who enjoy no challenge.

You do understant that only 1 percent of the woW population has defeted Ragnaros on Heroic mode.

 

 

 

 

If you compared that to the percentage of actual progressing raiding guilds within the WoW population you would have more of a point. FYI: The entire WoW Pop doesn't raid.

and they don't because they can't. not because they don't want to. raiding is a ridiculous element to any game. any element which locks out the majority of your players is ridiculous. it's like having paytv and being told you can only watch one of the 50 odd channels, but that if you watch 10 hours a day and can recite the upcoming guide to what's on for the next year at any given time, then you can unlock another few channels.

i don't think it's making anything easy by letting everyone have a chance to play the game they're paying for. there's nothing challenging about a boss with double lifepoints who never does anything outside of a set series of moves you can easily discover on youtube anyway. the only real challenge with raiding is getting the group together out of the few other guys you know who have egos the size of a small planetoid.

 

Not everyone likes/wants/aspires to raid. A lot of pvpers don't raid at all. Your point is still invalid.

I can only repeat what I think: I LOVE IDEA OF EXPANSION! Period. Barely can wait for release and to be able to play (kung-fu :-)) panda monk. About so much hate .... well is know fact, that haters (and fanboys) are very VOCAL, but they DO NOT rapresent (or at least I hope) majority of 11 millions of players that are paying subs.

I would have loved Ethereals as a race, as one poster suggested. Sadly Blizz seems to have this problem of ignoring everything they've created in previous expansions, as if they're not good enough. There are several races from Outland and Northrend that would make great members of the Horde/Alliance. But instead of working with what they have, Blizz is determined to keep creating more.

Blizz should scrap this expansion and work on making levels 60-80 better, while possibly bringing in new races from those areas.

Originally posted by Otinashi

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Blizzard is making Wow so that it is too easy.  There is no challenge like the game used to be.  It is all about pleasing the "I want it now" crowd and I really do not want anything to do with people who enjoy no challenge.

You do understant that only 1 percent of the woW population has defeted Ragnaros on Heroic mode.

If you compared that to the percentage of actual progressing raiding guilds within the WoW population you would have more of a point. FYI: The entire WoW Pop doesn't raid.

You are kinda making my point for me. The fact that in order to kil Ragnaros you have to be part of a progression guild Proves that it IS a challenge.  That a regular guild can't Kill Rags proves that there are still challenges left in World of Warcraft. 

I think people are looking for a reason to hate Blizavision.  I stopped playing their products a few years ago, so I can neither slag or support the new expac.  I will say that the Pandaren's were indeed around long before Kung Fu Panda, so it's within Blizzard's rights to use such content. In fact, I'm surprised that they haven't used it sooner.  I always thought that they were never going to use the Pandaren's due to a law in China.  It had something to do with violence/death being brought upon the likeness of a Panda?  I don't live there so don't quote me for truth, but remember reading it a few years ago when the first expac was getting ready to be dropped.

Personally? I'll be playing SWTOR.  Getting sick of the fantasy setting.  I need something new.

Originally posted by spankybus

I think I saw it on gameinformer.com, the president of Blizzard pretty much says that this ex-PAC is primarily for the Chinese market. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/10/27/blizzard-president-talks-wow.aspx

 

That was just what i said a few days ago. Blizzard has about given up on the western market, as their B-team can't compete with SWTOR and GW2 anymore. Cata already showed that they lost it. Same goes for handling the talent trees which got dumped down the 2nd time within 2 xpacs. All the good guys who were able to move the weight of the former WoW seem to work on Titan by now.

So instead of trying to fight declining subs on the western market with delivering quality, they rather aim for the asian market with a cheap panda and asian-theme move.

Guess we can expect accouncements like "14mio sub" soon after- which will mean NOTHING with their "1 hour inet cafe = 1 sub" definition. Or "most anticipated xpac ever", which will again mean nothing if they give it away for free to the chinese again.

I've never played WoW, so I can only speak as an outsider. But seeing these pandas does nothing to increase my desire to play this game. I doubt I'd play any MMO that had pandas in it, they are far too 'cutesy' for my tastes. Maybe it will attract more 11-year old girls to the game, I don't know.

If Blizz wanted to do something fresh and fun instead of a neutral race that plays both sides why not add a 3rd faction? It is about time a big game added a 3rd faction to the pvp. It would revive the pvp between factions in WoW and add some fun to the mix with a 3rd one. Make pvp meaningful by allowing more than control of a region to do more mindless dungeon running for gear. Allow for market changes or something. In FFXI if a faction controlled an area they got new markets opened up in their city from those vendors and some extra items were sold from city vendors. Something like that would give WoW or any mmo a nice change compared to the cookie cutter setups they have now.

Whats with the Kungfu Panda hate...? I liked that movie :D

Originally posted by kalinis

 

Come on there was never any choice in the old trees. Everyone figured out the optimal pvp and pve builds and if u strayed at all u couldnt run pvp or pve in premade groups or ever raid at all.

At least the system now gives u choices to make based on what skill u want more not base3d on what some site says is the best skill to have to raid. 

 

Is this the sum of all jokes or what?

On vanilla i was playing on a hunter. Do you know that i had discovered at least 7-8 different speccs combinations of telents,to beat warriors and various other classes in pvp in mellee mode? Do you know it was possible to beat a Marshal frost mage without firing a single arrow? Im talking back then in vanilla,there were working speccs that u couldnt even find in forums,never got discovered or tried by the so called geniuses,that were efficient in many ways and for many situations?

The old way of talents were offering the fun of exploration in quite big depth of character creation and advancement.

Nothing to do ofc with the shitty,narrowed down to zero, pre-choosed by blizard advancementt paths odf my character.

Main reason ofc to why i quitted wow after 5 + years.

Ppl are free ofc to go play kungfu pandas,chuck norris,pokemons,crocodiles with laser guns, or what ever else bliz is planning to implement in future...

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Originally posted by Alalala

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Originally posted by grawss

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Originally posted by Alalala Alalala?  It's just a repeating sequence of the left most and right most letters on the second row of the keyboard.  Picked for convenience and means nothing.

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In other words, if you consider a ludicrous image to dictate the maturity levels of those who play Pandaren, then I'll let ludicrous images decide your own maturity level. You know, using your argument against you and such. It's almost like you're plugging your ears and chanting "alalala" to avoid actual arguments; instead relying on pictures like you've been posting to make some irrelevant point. ;)   By the way, I bet if you typed "Pandaren" into Google Images, you'd have a pretty hard time finding toddlers dressed in panda suits. Might as well compare apples to apples, yes?  

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I'm sorry the image of a toddler in a panda suit has made you so very upset.  The image is there to remind people of the close association the panda has with infants and children in our culture, which I believe undermines Blizzard's choice.  It has a point, and images are supported in this forum as you well know.About 30 posts into this very topic I lay out why I think this race is a bad choice and my rejection of several arguments in favor.  I feel it presents, for a quickly written forum post, an organized and coherent point of view.  You may disagree with my perspective, but you cannot say that I am avoiding arguments as you claim.  Once again, I include another image of a kid with a toy panda to say to people: This is really poor, childish choice for Blizzard.You will also see that I like WoW and I am generally okay with the other expansion features, which freshen up a game that needs some vitality.  (The panda race,though, is still a deal breaker.)  Anyway, you never called me a WoW Hater directly, which I recognize and appreciate.To be honest, I really don't understand where you are going with a google image search of my meaningless forum name and how it relates to anything, so you'll pardon me if continue to ignore that rambling.  You were doing a satsifactory job across the topics defending the panda choice, but there I felt like you diminished yourself, and then went did it to yourself again after I explained it has no meaning.  And besides, that off-topic behavior is frowned upon.On the off chance it is the use of a child in a photograph that has you so emotional, here's a picture of an adult living out his fantasy of being a panda.  It does not illustrate the association of children and pandas, but it probably still makes people think twice about how they will spend their leisure time in WoW.  I get that some people don't care and some are even passionate about being a panda.  If you own a panda suit, please do not photograph yourself and post it here to make your point that panda fantasy is ok, and that Blizzard is fine.  Simply tell me you have one and you get the win.

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Maybe it's only because there will be 5 levels on content without the excuse of "but we're revamping the entire world!".  Sounds like an overpriced ripoff.

this is not rocket science people. Adults usually dont want to engage into activities which are, or can be perceived as, childish activities. And pandaren can be seen as a quite childish, silly race.