should pandaren be changed to an alliance race

[Sangris]

Oh no, but what would we do without those 3 pandaren in the Horde?

Seriously though, if Blizzard ever did that, they'd have to give the Horde another race in return. And whatever that would be, the Alliance would bitch because the Horde gets a new race while the Alliance doesn't, and all they get is exclusivity for a race that only very few people play.

[Ophenia]

Pandarens should have remained neutral NPCs with Jinyu and Hozen put as playable race for Alliance and Horde.

Edit : with a deeper development for these 2 races of course

[Deleted]

burn teh furries whit fire

[Powerogue]

Maybe they're all just gluttons for punishment? :P
(2:36)



(In all honesty though I hope the pandaren being on both sides of this mess is explored in the next expansion. We saw how Garrosh's reckless actions nearly lead to the belves leaving for the alliance in MoP for example)

[Techno-Druid]

I respectfully disagree. Pandaren could have remained NPCs all along. We didn't get Frost Dwarves for WotLK, either. I think it was rather the addition of Monks that would have really made the lack of Pandas lame.

Frost dwarves weren't the dominant race in Northrend and didn't have a presence in every continent with an expansion's worth of lore from their enslavement by the mogu to Shaohao using his inner spirit to encase Pandaria in mists.

Besides, people have been asking for pandaren since WC3 and Blizzard even considered adding them as the Alliance race in TBC.

Supposedly, a gaming magazine was brought to Blizzard's offices in the fall of 2005 to view the The Burning Crusade expansion pack for the first time. There were dozens of posters and artwork depicting the pandaren as the new Alliance race. A so-called pandaren screenshot was also leaked, but was eventually dismissed as fake after the draenei were announced. Other gaming sources stated that when "mentioning the ex-April-Fool's-joke Pandaren Empire to Blizzard staff got a surprisingly cagey response..." Blizzard would not confirm or deny these rumors directly until BlizzCon 2011, when Chris Metzen confirmed during an interview with Direct TV that the pandaren were indeed the original Alliance race for The Burning Crusade, but about halfway through the development of BC they were replaced with the draenei. In light of this revelation, the pandaren screenshot might have a been legit leak.

As much as I like pandaren, my gripes—and I guess a few others—is with the models and certain aspects of their culture. I think the pre-MoP perception of pandaren was more along the lines of a outwardly cute being that was a ruthless, but honorable fighter and a part of me wishes they stuck to that.

As for their models, I wish the male pandaren models we're a bit thinner and their heads a bit bigger and overall I wish they were less sexually dimorphic. The pandaren model we got is still a lot better than the one planned for TBC though.