World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[The_Jackal]

Yes. Pandarens were introduced artistically as an april fools joke. And then introduced into Warcraft 3 in a serious way. And then do the same with WoW. If you're going to cite a source, try one that doesn't suck like wowwiki, which has basically been kaput since mid-wrath.
www.wowpedia.org/Pandaren

Hey, I just grabbed the first link that came up when I googled 'Pandaren April Fools'. Being in charge of fact-checking the page-rank algorithm is well outside my day to day job description, I'm just trying to make a point.

How dare the fans say they want to see them implemented for real and how dare the company that makes the game actually listen to them. And how dare that company do it a second time in the face of 7 years of overwhelming fan demand.

There's a reason fan-service is generally treated with critical contempt. Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it a good idea, and there's no democratic representation of Blizzard game buyers, only squeaky wheels who incessantly troll the forums.

Fandumb ladies and gents. Fandumb.
It could rain gold, the people would complain that it isn't silver.
Seriously, this argument gets more tiresome every time I see it.

The only yellow I see raining from the Blizzard skies these days isn't gold, and I don't care if 99% of Blizzard players personally petitioned Michael Morhaime with chocolates and stripper-grams, begging him to include Pandarens, it's a DUMB idea whose mere presence in Azeroth makes the rest of the IP that much worse.

As I see it, MoP is establishing new villains, rather a lot of them really, and setting the stage for some intrigue, and setting the stage for the open war that "fans" also demanded. The "war" story looks like it could get interesting, and start developing all kinds of 'villains' just the way the RTS games did. IE-Daelin Proudmoore.

Really? Because as I see it, Blizzard has put the WoW franchise on autopilot. They'll keep cranking out successively less and less creative and ambitious content drops as the underlying engine grows more and more outdated, until their subscription numbers finally fail to justify further investment into the platform. And it's not like that arc isn't without precedent.

Look, I'm a long-time Blizzard supporter. I like their games, and I'm willing to overlook the occasional goofy bull**** they seem intent on doing every so often. I'll pick up MoP, I'd certainly LOVE to be proven wrong. But my back to back disappointing experiences of Cataclysm and Diablo III don't exactly have me brimming with confidence.