Anyone got references to overwhelming proof that pandaren were asked for and loved?

[Deleted]

Jesus man, you've got too much free time in your life. What a headcase. MMO Champion Sherlock Holmes.. overwhelming proof.. lol
Why does it matter. At all. MoP was in 2012, let it go man. Let it go.

[Triceratrozer]

Gonna throw my coin into the pot and say I wanted 'em.

Fucking duh.

[Ramz]

i remember back years ago. pandaren, naga, high elf, and ogre were always asked for.

why they went with pandaren over the others, i have no idea.

Because there were no pandaren in game? Unlike the rest?

[Manabomb]

See, I don't have overwhelming proof.

What I do know is that Pandaren were asked for and loved by the developers. And considering it's their game, can't really fault them for that.

[Klingers]

No evidence except my own totally subjective delight when they were added. Pandas kick arse.

[Thetruth1400]

They said they had a request box at Blizzcon or something like that, and Pandaren as a playable race was the #1 thing that ended up in it. That's their story, at least.

I like to take my advice from a random box where a bunch of trolls hang out too.

In all seriousness, if that's Blizzard's story, more power to them, but wow, I couldn't think of a worse place to get my game ideas then a small sample of people anonymously.

I have to agree with the OP though, I can't remember seeing much in the way of "Oh yeah, I REALLY NEED these Pandas, except in troll threads or around the April Fools when they announced them. Even then, they were scarce. I think Blizzard just wanted to add them in, people took them as a joke, so Blizzard deflected with their version of how they came to be. Don't get me wrong, MoP was okay, but pretty much everything there was just out of the blue and new, so it doesn't feel like it ties in with the overall feel of WoW.

[Lasombria]

Does it really matter? Did anyone specifically ask for Arthas? Can you prove it? What about Worgen? Goblins? Orcs? Trolls? Dalaran? Darnassus? Night Elves?

I was going to make the same point. Nobody that I'm aware of was asking in the early '90s for a Warhammer Fantasy knock-off RTS, nor saying that if it did come their way, they wanted it for sure with a multi-millennium history including a ton of Greek mythology pastiche, oh, and something like Dragonlance's kender but a bit more functional. For that matter, in the mid-1970s there was no particular surge of interest in having the director of a pretty good movie about '50s nostalgia turn his scattered ideas for a Flash Gordon revival into a Buddhism Lite space opera with plot and supporting characters swiped from Kurosawa. This just wasn't a thing you'd see in film journals at the time.

One of the things creators do is come up with things people haven't seen but that they will (the creators hope) enjoy once they've seen them. This is, like, a standard thing, a basic part of the job. In fact it's actually illegal not to, since plagiarism and other intellectual-property-appropriation crimes exist.

In addition, there's the observation Roger Ebert made: "It's not what a film is about, it's how it is about it." Likewise for any other creative medium. Rashomon and A Serbian Film both have violent sexual assaults and the conflicting stories people tell to excuse themselves and blame others, but they are not at all the same story. Dirty Harry and Beverly Hills Cop both feature police officers with bad disciplinary histories deliberately breaking the boundaries of their duty and obligations in pursuit of criminals who'd otherwise get away, but you can readily distinguish the two.

There's no way anyone could have really asked in advance for Mists, because of a zillion decisions that all add up. If you were thinking about a wish list for primarily Chinese-influenced setting and stories, would it have occurred to you to ask for the hozen, and the sha, and the mogu, and the klaaxi? Nobody was going to ask in advance for the jinyu plotline and the precise nature of the White Tiger or Red Crane. It doesn't work like that. There is no alternative to taking the scattered wishes expressed and then doing a lot of invention in service of a concept and package that the creators hope will be well-received.

[HitRefresh]

i remember back years ago. pandaren, naga, high elf, and ogre were always asked for.

why they went with pandaren over the others, i have no idea.

Pandaren were going to be the Alliance race in Burning Crusade, but something with China didn't let them go very far with the idea.

Naga presented an issue with leg armor and mounts and such.

Instead of High Elves we have Blood Elves, supposedly there aren't that many High Elves left to warrant a race.

Ogres were going to be in Warlords of Draenor as a playable race, but the expansion was rushed because they had a goal to release an expansion a year, so we don't have that, and probably won't really get another opportunity for that for a while.

[Griffter]

I loved MoP, but I definitely wasn't sold on the theme until I actually played it and I don't remember many people being excited about the Pandaren. I think Blizzard realized it was a mistake to center the whole expansion around them pretty soon after it was "leaked", which is why they started emphasizing the war against Garrosh way more than the happy go lucky pandaland thing right from the beginning.

[bromanbro]

do people really want Ogres/Naga? They have crap lore and their models are crap. Armor would look awful on them. They were basically filler baddies in WC3.

[Darsithis]

Dragonlance's kender but a bit more functional.

Kender rogue FTW.

The fact that you even know of them on a WoW fan site makes you 100% cooler than everyone else

[Jastall]

Expansions are brainstormed and designed years in advance. I'm pretty sure MoP was in pre-production before Cata even released. I strongly doubt they took this decision off a poll alone. They brought up the poll to support their course of action, perhaps. Lots of people were in an uproar about the addition of Pandaren.

Which was always something that amused me, to be honest. Jamaican trolls, Scottish Dwarves doing squat dances, New Yorker/Jew stereotype Goblins, Werewolves choking on their cockney accents, space goat/squids with Russian accents, unintelligible fish-men making funny noises (and I could go on), these are all OK and work well together as part of a cohesive, believable setting. Anthropomorphic pandas? Now that's just going too far! My immersion is ruined! WoW is now a kid's game that doesn't take itself seriously!

[Hctaz]

Prior to this did you actually play warcraft for the plot? Ahahahahahahaha

I mean... yes? Did you not? It's an RPG like...

[Kul Tiras]

I'm happy this thread hasn't (mostly) degenerated into the typical "OP is just a pandaren hater" (after I posted a video of my panda rogue), however after 3 pages, I still see no historical answer to my question, which is what I asked for and the point of my lengthy historical explanation.

I ask about proof pandaren were as well received and requested as Blizz claimed at inception, and Jastall above for example talks to me about WoW development and then devolves into allusions that I have something against pandaren. I fucking hate forums everywhere, it's like talking to politicians.

[Apology]

If you never saw it in your time on the forums, then you weren't paying attention. I'm not scouring the old WoW forums (do they even exist these days?) for "what race do you want to see in WoW" threads when you can do that yourself, but it's an objective fact that pandas were the most requested race prior to Mists of Pandaria.

Granted, I don't think anyone wanted an entire expansion revolving around them, but to say "no one wanted this" is just blatantly untrue.

[Phookah]

You have too much time on your hands. I suggest finding an interest.

[Deleted]

I know - it is "cool" to hate on pandaren ever since the MoP Kung-Fu-Panda Days but I remember people bringing up Pandaren all the time in Posts about races they'd like to see added. Along Things like Goblins or Naga.

[Kul Tiras]

Oh look it's Kul Tiras's daily "Blizzard sucks" whinethread.

Is this a repost of a Pandaria whine you wrote in 2012 or is it just staggeringly irrelevant?

How were you here in 2012 if you account is 1 year old? How was I here if my account is not even 1 year old?

If you never saw it in your time on the forums, then you weren't paying attention. I'm not scouring the old WoW forums (do they even exist these days?) for "what race do you want to see in WoW" threads when you can do that yourself, but it's an objective fact that pandas were the most requested race prior to Mists of Pandaria.

Granted, I don't think anyone wanted an entire expansion revolving around them, but to say "no one wanted this" is just blatantly untrue.

I never said that.

You have too much time on your hands. I suggest finding an interest.

I'm particularly interested in historical truth seeking.

- - - Updated - - -

I know - it is "cool" to hate on pandaren ever since the MoP Kung-Fu-Panda Days but I remember people bringing up Pandaren all the time in Posts about races they'd like to see added. Along Things like Goblins or Naga.

I never said I hated pandaren I play one.

[Kazuchika]

More like you're particularly interested in shitposting.

I love that the mods care so little about these forums now they don't even curb the shitposting they raise the stakes by even posting in the threads.

[klogaroth]

I never asked for a Warcraft MMO. All these random MMO people coming out the woodwork trying to get in on the RTS series, pretending like they played Orcs and Humans.