Is it impossible to dislike pandaria constructively without "YOU HATE PANDAS" bs?

[owbu]

It is not possible to have any constructive discussion on the internet without some people throwing memorized phrases at you, wether they apply to your specific argument or not. That's just how a lot of people "argue".

The trick is to ignore those people and argue with the people who have actually read your thread and respond to the points you made.
And those people also exist in every thread.

[Snowfunk]

I find furries repulsive, that is all.

[neik]

Nice and chill expansion. World of Warcraft done the right way.

P.S

I hate pandas. MoP Sucks!

Not an argument.

[Steelangel]

MoP wasn't that far off from the usual tragedy and darkness of the Warcraft universe. Even that continent itself had a few very dark and war-torn zones.

Hell, there's a lot to say that Pandaria was the darkest of any WoW expansion. For all of the jokey roly-poly strangely zen Pandaren fun times, we watched Horde warlocks enslave children, a war that no one but Garrosh wanted between Alliance and Horde release the spawn of an old God. An entire faction that you get exalted with literally tell you to your face that when the stars are right, they will straight up murder you and everyone else. An ancient king who kicked the ass of the Prime Designate to steal his power and leave him to bleed to death slowly over millennia, and Orc Hitler, who ran off to a different timeline to create a whole horde of Orc Hitlers to remind everyone once again that Thrall is the exception not the rule when it comes to the absolute depravity of Orcs.

[Kyphael]

Sure, I say it all the time, I got burned out of WoW during Mists. I found the overall theme and look boring for 3+ years. Had little to do with Pandaren themselves and more to do with just being in Pandaria that damn long. It was a great expansion for most, and in concept, it was that good, but not to me.

[Doffen]

The one thing that pops up when people talk about the good parts about MoP is gameplay, aka class design. Which might have been awesome for many people, but that is enough to make someone love an expansion. MoP had a silly way of progressing your character like dailies in and out and the dungeons/raids outside ToT/SoO isn't really memorable so for me personally MoP was just too boring to play. I tried for like 6-8 weeks during two periods in MoP and it just wasn't great.

But, when someone like how a class plays one expansion, that's enough to remember it fondly. The pandaren hate excuse is just fucking silly though, I gotta add that. That's the defense people come up with when someone say they didn't like MoP. Pandas was the least of the problem. I love the asian theme myself, but that was overshadowed with all the useless things you had to do to progress your character. There is a reason why dailies have mostly been a secondary progression which tends to be over in a few weeks in the later expansions instead of having it as your main thing.

[Varodoc]

Hell, there's a lot to say that Pandaria was the darkest of any WoW expansion. For all of the jokey roly-poly strangely zen Pandaren fun times, we watched Horde warlocks enslave children, a war that no one but Garrosh wanted between Alliance and Horde release the spawn of an old God. An entire faction that you get exalted with literally tell you to your face that when the stars are right, they will straight up murder you and everyone else. An ancient king who kicked the ass of the Prime Designate to steal his power and leave him to bleed to death slowly over millennia, and Orc Hitler, who ran off to a different timeline to create a whole horde of Orc Hitlers to remind everyone once again that Thrall is the exception not the rule when it comes to the absolute depravity of Orcs.

And we saw genocide literally in the first 10 minutes of the expansion:

[TickTickTick]

I have nothing against pandas specifically, nor an Asian themed game. My issue was that it simply doesn't fit Warcraft. They turned what was originally an easter egg in WC3 and a Holiday mascot in WoW to coincide with Germany's brewfest into actual canon. If they made an expansion that revolved around Winterveil and having to save Santa, I would be just as disappointed.

And while WoW was never a mature game that had its comedy relief sprinkled throughout the game, MoP felt like it was overdone in terms of the leveling compaign.

MoP lore wise was probably the greatest story they produced from stratch. What's even more impressing is that it wasn't barebones, it was rich and actually made sense.

If MoP doesn't fit Warcraft, how does Shadowlands do? Or BfA? I can't recall hearing anything about Shadowlands or Azeroth the Titan Soul in RTS games. Or are you just being picky now?

[BicycleMafioso]

I skipped MoP.

I was in the beta reasonably early (although it was a cluster-heck because of the annual pass debacle), my second beta linked to my own account. I really liked the starting off things.
But when they changed to the current talent tree model, I'd had enough. I waited and tried it on the live servers as well, but my opinion stood. Did not want.

I like Pandaren (apart from how I don't wish to play races without proper boots, so I don't). I liked how the story turned out. But I vehemently did not like the talent tree revamp at the time, nor do I now.
Blizzard made the explicit promise not to much up talents after the Cata revamp, promising that this was a more "future proof" way of doing it, one that they could carry into future expansions. And in the expansion after, they change it again. At that point, I'd had enough of Blizzard after having had endured Cata. I loved the start of Cata, but then they nerfed dungeons into oblivion and went back on the "healer mana should matter" design again. Blergh.

So I skipped the expansion and I've held resentment toward it since. I came back in late-late-late WoD, so I could play some BGs and farm cata-raids. I enjoyed that, didn't experience anything else about the game in WoD so I am indifferent to it.

[Martymark]

Gameplay wise, I thought it was excellent.

Story wise, I hated it. As a Horde player the story was "Your team sucks, you suck, hate yourself you evil loser!"

[Nachturnal]

Unless the sole reason for hating the expansion is like this poster says, then yea... then again wouldn't hating LK being the same thing? 'You just hate Death Knights!11!'

On-topic: I think MoP was the beginning of the end for me. I don't know what it was, but the expansion overall was just meh.

Well if the reason you hate WotLK is because of DK, then the logic applies still. I just think a class and/or race are just a tiny piece of what defines an expansion.

>Disliking expansion "because it offers weird, out of place, aesthetic and offers immersion-breaking race, and also all themes had no place in the game previously and barely make sense in the context of the setting" is bullshit.

Every day i learn something new from retards on mmo-champion.

Bitter gatekeeping. Sure you can make an argument about how an expansion fits the overall theme of the game but that doesn't take away fom the gameplay, systems and overall story. It's just handwaving without taking into account the actual content.

[Anastacy]

[Athredas]

The same people who shat on Pandaren then went to GW2 (Asura) or FFIX (Lalafel)

[Malikath]

Yes, I hated the coins of gold rolls, the creation of thunder-forging, the design of ret pallies and DKs as a whole(still haven't been good since wrath ended), and the bone grind that they made an entire island for.
Even as my favorite expac it has it's flaws that needed to be polished away but sadly still remain in the game.
Like those lazy ass paper-wings the new gryphon model has.

But IoT and the timeless isle were the best IQD descendants to date, nazjatar comes close but needs the systems of mechagon where persistent effort pays out progress consistently so that people have the ability to progress through effort rather then incident.
Ideally the "end-game map" would be more optimized for large-scale combat, while retaining the interactive elements that IoT and the timeless isle have, those alongside the systems to provide incentive to both group questing through relevant rewards and WPVP through systems like warmode that can reward PVP automatically as stopping to loot badges have never been an option for anyone trying to contribute to the team.

[Dundebuns]

I'm not a fan of the oriental aesthetic and found leveling to be painful, although now it's my preferred area as I can get 5 levels in half a zone.

[Thage]

Yes, OP, it is possible to dislike Pandaria constructively. Speaking as someone who loved the hell out of that expansion, it did several things wrong and did so exceedingly poorly. Off the top of my head, reputations gated behind reputations gated behind reputations was a really bad idea, especially when those reputations were the primary source of Valor gear at the expansion's launch.

The problem is, very few people on this forum dislike Pandaria constructively. The majority of criticisms leveled at it boil down to "omgah pandaz" or arbitrarily deciding Oriental elements don't 'belong' in a techpunk fantasy game where steam engines, interdimensional travel facilitated via crystal magitek, gryphonback air travel, and fully-functional clockwork-and-combustion-engine gunships all exist side by side with no apparent dissonance in what I can only assume is jingoistic gatekeeping because China's pretty shitty and anything China-inspired must therefore be hated lest they win?

[Sansnom]

Like do you really not feel embarassed and retarded to dismiss any and all arguments, no matter how well written and expalined, just because you really fucking love pandaren and you're afraid that maybe someone will logically show you that something about THE EXPANSION AS A WHOLE is dumb? And GOD FORBID, that maybe SOMETHING about the pandaren is dumb or poorly written and executed as well?

And why are you so incense others disagree? You seems to be jumping onto the same Pandarens bandwagon and use that as a reason why people disagree.

Go ahead. Show us why logically the whole expansion is dumb as you claim it to be. Why people cannot disagree with your logic.

[Kathranis]

It's ridiculous to me how many people complain about one continent featuring medieval Chinese aesthetics in a game that already pulls heavily (and anachronistically) from European, Native American, Caribbean, Egyptian, Arabian, Norse, Japanese, and Mongolian aesthetics. Literally ever continent on Earth has been the inspiration behind different kingdoms in this game, why is China somehow off limits? They have rich history and mythology filled with all the same kinds of stories -- heroes, wizards, swordsmen, dragons. Oh, no, their dragons are long and don't have wings, and the roofs of their castles are upturned instead of slanted!

It's an ignorant fucking position to take in the first place. If someone is arguing from that place, that alone is enough for me to write off whatever opinions they express.

[Darknessvamp]

nvm just another panda hater thread /s

Taking you seriously now, the problem is that the pandas are even mentioned in the first place as a criticism of something unrelated to them. Like taking your post OP, you focus almost exclusively on the Pandaren as the point of contention when criticising the criticism of criticism of MoP and seem to have a particular large animosity towards their existence thus this is just a thinly veiled Pandaren dislike thread under the guise of criticising criticism. In most cases threads that attempt to criticise MoP start out like this, highlight a strong dislike of the Pandas up front with a fairly weak criticism of something else to try and hide it even though they actually do have an issue with the second thing but have a greater issue with the Pandas when they could just leave out the Panda hate and people could focus on their actual argument.

Like for example, I wasn't particularly fond of the "Anduin gets his bones crushed by a stone bell and then gets away with having a bandage round his head and becoming best friends with a Black Dragon that plans to incite a literal extermination war against his faction and own people to ensure one faction has a strong enough hold on the planet in order to repel a third party threat" Quest Line and him going "lolokay" and hanging out in an Inn playing chess.

And we saw genocide literally in the first 10 minutes of the expansion:

I know the literal meaning of the word is to kill a large amount of a particular group of people but hadn't the Civilians been evacuated long before they mana bombed it and all that remained were the soldiers that had been attacking the Horde for months prior to this as well as the Alliance Reinforcements that had arrived to assist them due to this retaliation?

[Synical123]

This is my take on it, and keep in mind I don't mean *everybody*

But the people who loved panderia the most are people who love things like anime and the asian culture all together. There is nothing wrong with that, but this allows for a lot of people to see past some major flaws with an expansion just because they love the scenery of it so much. Which again, is totally understandable. In fact I would argue that's why vanilla wow was such a success even though it had major major flaws, because it was in a scenery a lot of people were familiar with but was finally in an open world setting.

Panderia was a terrible expansion IMO, especially for pvp and how the whole game felt all together. This was the first expansion where you got the whole 'hit end level, cap conquest by doing nothing, do lfr while afk, and then just afk for 3 weeks until you're geared' feeling.

Granted, a lot of these things happened in cata and were just as bad then, but the feeling of having that terrible system of character progression enhanced in the next expansion really just felt like the game we loved was basically over.