What happened to the Pandaren?

[Clone]

Did you play the Warcraft games? They were more colourful than most other RPG/RTSs at the time, much more than for example Diablo. Not so many grungy earth tones but instead bright reds and greens. The armor is simple in design, but bulky and large, and the character designs are overdimensioned, simplified, quite cartoony. It started in the RTSes and continued into WoW.

And yes, the concept art was edgy but that wasn't what we ended up with inside the games. Look at Diablo to see how the different styles differ. They are much more edgy and dark. And yeah, the Pandaren was originally much more ferocious and Japanese inspired with samurai weapons and clothing. It's a shame we did not get to see so much of that, but I can imagine Blizz did not want to mix it it too much. We did get the ShadoPan at least.

You also have to remember that Blizzard took a lot of inspiration from the Warhammer universe and they too had a stylised style at the time with bulky overdimensioned armor(still do, especially in 40K) and plenty of colour. Not everything was Chaos.

All this is bullshit and don't assume you are the only one that played the RTS. There was nothing more colorful about WC 1/2 compared to other games like C&C. The fact the concept art looked both cartoony and edgy at the same time proves the limiting factor is not the art style.

[Pakheth]

All this is bullshit and don't assume you are the only one that played the RTS. There was nothing more colorful about WC 1/2 compared to other games like C&C. The fact the concept art looked both cartoony and edgy at the same time proves the limiting factor is not the art style.

Calm down dude.

In my original post I only said the in-game art style didn't allow for SUPER EDGYNESS, no where did I say the style couldn't be edgy. The Warcraft style has range, but I wouldn't call it super edgy. Like I said, it isn't Diablo, it isn't Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age: Origins. There isn't blood splatter and guts everywhere or the world mainly consists of dirt tones. And yeah, WoW is a lot more cartoony than the Warcraft games, there is low poly chunks of meat laying about in WoW for example but I personally never found them realistic enough to ever find them creepy. The simplified artstyle of those details just never came across as something dark to me. The darkest aspect of WoW for me would be the vanilla hanged men corpses hanging from trees and inside crypts, but they were also extremely low poly so when you got closer they weren't that spooky anymore. Just an example.

I've seen Metzen's original sketches of the orcs for the Warcraft games and honestly I don't think half the nitty gritty he aimed for got into the games. It most likely was because of engine limitations at the time. Heck, early WoW models weren't much better. The polygon count was atrocious, but I was necessary at the time.
There used to be this great website with a lot of the early concept art from Blizz artists but I can't find it. It had some great comparison shots of concept art and in-game visuals which would have better illustrated my point, but alas, can't find it now.

And nowhere did I specifically say the C&C serier wasn't colorful, it's only one of many RTSes. I used a broad stroke there obviously, I would say it in general used a lot more dirt tones but the later entries in the serier like Red Alert definitely was colorful, both in style and humor.

Also, remember that concept art does not equal in-game art, or else we could argue that Blizzard's Molten Core April fool's game concept art vs in-game art is the same thing.

[Soimu]

They are a race based on a joke based on a self insert, being forgotten is where they should be.

Begone pest. Pandarens are awesome.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

More than the Pandarens it's the Jinyu and the Hozens I want to see more of.

[Soon-TM]

They’re not very popular amongst players, so I imagine, as a business, Blizzard doesn’t want to put too much emphasis on them.

On the other hand, you have the absolute most played race in the Horde who has done absolutely nothing since freaking BC, other than getting slaughtered by Jaina Sue in MoP. Maybe throw in the completely inconsequential story about Boblyssra, and that's being generous.