Originally Posted by
cptaylor38
You're so stupid! Nah nah nah. j/k
I partially agree. In short, I think WoW has always had cheesy pop-culture references, such as Haris Pilton, but I've always enjoyed those. I'm not sure that's what you're referring to when you are talking about satire.
To me, the cheesiest thing about this expansion is that it does seem a bit of a satire on Kung Fu Panda to me. I mean, when you consider the plot of Kung Fu Panda, at least the second one which is the latest one I can recall... his people were pretty much massacred in a genocide, which isn't directly similar to Pandaria but the Pandaren have always been in danger of extinction from the Mantid and so forth.
And the other major plot point is that the Crane creates this ultimate weapon that endangers everyone and is going to allow the Crane to take over the known world. Sound familiar? Maybe like Garrosh? I guess that's a pretty typical plot for any storyline though, because it fits the basic Hero meets opportunity meets conflict set of events.
But it's that on top of the fact that the Pandaren just happen to be essentially kung fu fighters. There are heavy amounts of cranes, tigers, (is there a monkey in Kung Fu Panda aka Hozen?) Mantid (mantis in Kung Fu Panda), the Tauren/Taunka or whatever (bull dude in Kung Fu Panda under leadership of Crane), goats (Goat prophet in Kung Fu Panda.) I get that these are kind of generalizing things, but the fact that all of the creatures in the land of Pandaria are pretty much mirroring the animal character line-up in Kung Fu Panda on top of the general plot.. it's pretty amusing.
Also, the scene where Po deflects the cannons in the water after finding inner peace, just reminds me of a monk spell. lol
This all could just have to do with the theme of the expansion being Asian/Chinese, and the fact that it seems kind of like the entire expansion was geared towards attracting that particular audience, but it's pretty similar if you take off the white knight blindfold and see it for what it is.
The whole expansion in general, despite the minor subtext and quests, had a very childish feel. In comparison to Cataclysm which seemed a little lackluster in general with the butchering of Deathwing and the dragon aspects, and the expansion before that being about a ruthless zombie horde and their chilling leader.. with an epic eerie 5 man dungeon that where he's chasing you down a narrow cliff like you're in a Mike Myers movie! Before that TBC was more of just a high fantasy, audience neutral expansion.
That was probably way too long, but that's my summary anyway.