Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.

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This is the fifth part of my write-up about World of Warcraft. You can read the first four by clicking the links below.

• Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla

• Part 2 - Burning Crusade

• Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King

• Part 4 - Cataclysm

• Part 6 - Warlords of Draenor

• Part 7 - Classic and Legion

• Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth

• Part 9 - Ruined Franchises

• Part 10 - The Fall of Blizzard

• Part 11 - Shadowlands

Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria

It was mid-2011. The final patch of Cataclysm was on its way, and Blizzcon was just around the corner. The subject of World of Warcraft’s next expansion had begun to gain traction once again, and as was tradition, the internet became awash with leaks. Some promised Old Gods, some foresaw Kul’Tiras or Zandalar or Nazjatar, Tel’Abim or Suramar or Sargeras – in short, players made every possible prediction in the vain hope that one of them might be proven right.

But none of them were.

No one could have predicted Pandaria.

An Unexpected Trademark

It wasn’t until the user ‘Mynsc’ went wading through the US Patent and Trademark Office website in search of info about Titan – Blizzard’s ‘open-secret’ new game in development – that they stumbled upon a recently-filed trademark by the name of ‘Mists of Pandaria’. Among all the theory-crafting and scavenging for information, it had been there a week, out in the open where anyone could find it, and yet completely overlooked.

It was immediately dismissed by many users as a book, a figurine, an in-game microtransaction perhaps. They cast it aside and turned to the more realistic leaks. But upon further inspection, the trademark was for a game, distributed on CD-ROMs with instruction manuals and guides. It had to be WoW content.

Okay, the community said. It was a patch.

”they don't trademark patches. If they never did before, why now?”

Then it had to be some kind of trading-card game spin off. Definitely not an expansion.

”The international class used in the trademark is the same as they used for previous expansions. The timing and information for the Mists of Pandaria trademark matches that of The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. If this is not going to be the expansion, they would really need to hurry to come up with a name and trademark it before they announce it at Blizzcon. Seems risky. Seems unlikely.”

It was a red herring, said the user ‘Johnnyarr’.

”Do you think blizz trademarked it to throw people off because they know we'll be searching pre-blizzcon?”

This sentiment echoed around the forums. Players simply refused to believe that Mists of Pandaria could be a real, genuine, true-to-life WoW expansion. What even were the ‘Mists of Pandaria’? A lot of them had never heard of Pandaren before.

But they did exist. Sort of.

One of Blizzard’s main artists, Samwise Didier, was known by the nickname ‘Panda’ to his friends, and had imagined and drawn Pandaren in the early 2000s. Blizzard had announced their addition to ‘Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos’ as an April Fools joke, and the response had been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, many fans were disappointed it had been a prank.

Pandaren became a favourite after that, an inside joke, and they began to worm their way into the game for real as easter eggs hidden away for perceptive players to find. When Blizzard released ‘Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne’, it was with a real Pandaren playable character, Chen Stormstout.

In World of Warcraft’s early development, questions arose about whether Pandaren would make a return. A community manager replied with the following:

pandaren will not be a playable race ... at this time. Will they make cameo appearances in the game as NPCs? Some things are best left unanswered I think :)

There were a couple of items that referred to the Pandaren, and one NPC child who would walk around telling unbelievable stories, one of which was ‘I swear, people have actually seen them. Pandaren really do exist!’

They re-emerged in 2005 as part of another April Fools joke. This time it was the Pandaren X-Press, a service that allowed players to order Chinese food deliveries within the game. A few years later in 2009, a cosmetic pet was added – The Pandaren Monk. I actually covered it in my Wrath of the Lich King write-up.

In fact, Blizzard had originally planned to make Pandaren a playable race in the Burning Crusade. They had created the models, designed the cities and the buildings, and written the lore. But when the Chinese government found out, they put a stop to it. Draenei were cobbled together to replace them at the last minute. That didn’t go public until after Mists was announced.

In a 2009 podcast, Sam Didier and Chris Metzen joked that Pandaren would be added as a playable race in ‘Patch 201732-and-a-half’. You can see why the trademark was dismissed as a red-herring at first. They had always been a joke, never a serious part of the lore. And that’s how Mists was seen.

”Decoy, I'm calling it right now,” said ‘Ryme’.

[...]

”Hehe, I know the news is slow at the moment, but I don't think this is the answer.”

[…]

’Vetali’ replied, ”I think they be trolling..... or they better be....”

[…]

”obviously a decoy before blizzcon, no way would they do a whole f'ing expansion on pandaria,” said another user.

Some players were receptive to the idea of a Pandaren expansion.

’Austilias’ replied, ”I was always under the impression that Blizzard avoided the Pandaren issue with respect to WoW, due to problems that it might cause in China which already has a pretty strict code on what aspects of WoW they permit (investigate Abominations in the Chinese version, for example, compared to the EU/US versions). Still, if the Pandaren are to be introduced as a race, I know that i'd be rather overjoyed where they a neutral race who perhaps in a questline would pledge themselves to the Alliance or the Horde.”

The expansion was divisive. There were those, like the user ‘Gunner_recall’, who said “If this is happening....SUPER STOKED!!!!”

‘Kathandira’ had the honour of being the expansion’s very first hater. Sixteen minutes after the trademark was posted, they responded:

“if this goes live, you will see my goodbye thread soon after, this game has been bordering TOO cartoony for me, this would be the last nail in the coffin.”

It caused quite the stir. I won’t post every reply, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Most people dismissed the entire concept, and those who didn’t were heavily divided. In an IGN interview a few weeks after the trademark, Game Director Tom Chilton further put players off the trail.

Chilton said the speculation was, "wildly overhyped." He added, "if you look at traditionally how we've handled that race it's been in those secondary products because we haven't realized it in the world. Most of the time when we do anything panda-related it's going to be a comic book or a figurine or something like that."

That put rest to the debate. For a while.

The Desolation of WoW

The stage had been set for one of the biggest dramas in World of Warcraft history.

Blizzcon 2011 had a different tone. The cosplay was still there like always, the esports were still going ahead, the merch shop still sold keyboards and hoodies. But there was an unspoken tension in the air – World of Warcraft had lost two million subscribers by that point, with no clear end in sight. Unlike every other announcement year, there hadn’t been any conclusive leaks. No one knew what to expect. It was with uneasy, desperate excitement that fans packed Stage Hall D. Chris Metzen (or as we real fans know him, Daddy) warmed up the crowd with his usual charm and some rather obscure promises of a new faction war. Daddy told us a war was coming, but this expansion would be the calm before the storm. He got everyone hyped up, and then the trailer began to play.

At Blizzcon, the guests went wild. But most of these players already knew about the trademark. They were prepared. And there’s something to be said for the effect of a good atmosphere. The announcement streamed out to Blizzcon pass holders, and then was uploaded to Youtube. Within minutes, it was on every forum, every server, and every gaming news site. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of pandas, which obey their own special laws.

It was official. Mists of Pandaria (hereafter abbreviated to MoP) was the next World of Warcraft expansion.

The community imploded. It was utter pandamonium.

From the frost-bitten slopes of Northrend to the sands of Uldum, the reactions came in thick and fast.

I though the Pandaren were a running joke? I stopped playing WoW just after Cataclysm but I still keep up with it since I do think it's a great game and I still love the art direction. But seriously. Pandas? What. The. Actual. Fuck?

The MMOChampion user ‘Quackie’ said, “Pandas? This is Blizz just trolling us right? […] Time for a new game.” To which others responded with, “Don't forget to close the door behind you, lock it and throw away your keys!!!”

My personal favourites were those who looked at it and said ‘Oh, how original,’ the way a kindergarten teacher might do when one of their students turns in a messy crayon drawing of their parents fighting.

Reporting on the scene of Blizzcon, Simon of the Yogscast said:

”I played a monk, a panda monk. It was strange. I sort of just waddled around, I hit things, I was doing [KUNG FU SOUNDS].”

”There’s no weapons, you don’t even punch things, you hug them. It’s going to be renamed World of Hugcraft,” he said, before reaching over and giving his colleague a big old squeeze.

There were reactions of confusion, bewilderment, incredulity, reactions of despair and anger, reactions of tentative anticipation. And some, like me, actually liked the look of MoP, if you can believe it.

Fans had a number of gripes.

The first, and perhaps the most knee-jerk response, was that it was just dumb. It had no solid foundation in the lore, it was too girly and cheery and bright (WoW’s worldbuilding was historically quite dark), and conflicted with the existing style of art, music and story-telling. It was a jarring Kung Fu Panda rip off..

Some thought the resemblance was so uncanny that there might be legal action

”Oh dear... I would not be surprised if this ended in a lawsuit, its too close, even if you can argue that the concept are not similar (martial art pandas vs... martial art pandas?)almost every environment they showed looks like a Kung Fu Panda set...”

Another responded.

My knee jerk reaction as well, the camera shots, building layouts and color pallets are uncanny. There's the building with the pool of water similar to the scroll room from the movie, and the squared courtyard very similar to where the festival takes place at the beggining of kung fu panda. The scene with the peach tree in particular with the bright pinks and dark purples are almost short for shot.

However not everyone felt that way.

Most likely because both pull from the same real world sources of ancient china and martial arts.

[…]

Yeah I just don't see it. It's like saying racing movie B copied racing movie A because they both have american cars in it....

Nathan Grayson, writing for VG247, had this to say.

Back in my day, Warcraft had orcs and humans. Squishy, weak-willed, whiny humans who wouldn't stop saying, “Moah work?” That was it. And now? Pandas. Warcraft has rotund kung-fu pa-- [CONTENT REMOVED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DREAMWORKS ENTERTAINMENT].

During BlizzCon's opening ceremonies, Blizzard roundhouse kicked fans' perceptions of what Warcraft's all about with warm, soothing colors, furry fists of fury, and heaping dollops of d'aaaaaaw. Folks weaned on bloodshed, angst, and cold, calculating strategy were understandably (and audibly) upset.

Are things really as bad as they seem, though? Will Blizzard's behemoth be done in not by a giant apocalypse dragon, but by fluffy – and perhaps even wuffy – pandas?

Far from a departure, Senior Game Producer John Lagrave promised a return to form. Conflict between the Horde and Alliance had driven the story of the original Warcraft games, and it was WoW that constantly forced the two factions to work together against a common enemy.

“It really hearkens back to the original game where you landed in Hillsbrad because the Alliance were coming up and starting to fight. That spontaneous world PVP was happening. That's the old war that's coming back.”

But even then, there was no hook, no big bad, nothing to keep players engaged beyond ‘faction conflict’. There was a villain, but it was ‘the Sha’, which was explained as a kind of misty black manifestation of negative emotion. It had no personality, no goals, no motives, and was generally difficult to care about.

”So how do you even get players excited about that? You're billing it as ‘the calm.’ Generally, that connotates to “not very exciting.” The point between the epic clashes. Those pages everybody skipped in Lord of the Rings where people started singing.” Nathan said. “How do you make people say “Oh boy!” about that?

One classic mock-trailer kept the deep angry voice but changed a few words around.

“An adventure safer than any we’ve known thus far. Low textured clouds, retextured trees.A mystery shrouded in a mystery. Architecture that looks really, really close to Chinese. And a people that may well know… how to sprinkle water on their opium an easier way…”

Here’s another.

”A mystery shrouded by April Fools jokes, a land of forgotten power – mainly because we made it up over the last couple of months.”

One of the biggest accusations levelled at Blizzard was that they were trying to win over the girls, the gays, the kids, the Chinese, the causals – everyone except the ‘real fans’. Of course, those ‘real fans’ only made up a tiny percentage of the playerbase.

”glad I stopped playing this game. getting gayer every update,” said one user.

[..]

Over the past seven years since WoW’s launch it’s gotten increasingly more cartoonish and playful. Gone are the savage looking armor sets and the grotesque demons littering the various dungeons, to make way for foam weapons, motorcycles, helicopters, and now, a playable Panda race. The Pandaren are the hardest to defend, take a look at them, they’re a race composed of bipedal Panda Bears–there’s no getting around it.

Many people within the community voiced similar opinions.

"I gotta say I really, really dislike the addition of pandas. Yes, I am going to get a lot of stick from morons who have no concept "OPINION". I just think they are way too silly, even though this has never been the most serious game in the world. The worst part is that it seems they are trying to do it with a straight face, which makes it even more hilarious (not in a good way).Apart from that though? I think the expac looks really, really good."

Not everyone had a problem with all the players complaining, and promising to leave.

"I think it's better that the people who don't like the next expac leave anyway. They are probably the sticks in the mud."

There were, of course, plenty of players who really looked forward to Mists. Here are a few of those reactions.

”I'm very satisfied with what I saw at Blizzcon today. MoP looks fantastic.”

[…]

”I don't get the hate for this expansion. They're adding some fantastic features, and are taking a much better design direction with the game. If only people looked passed Pandas. People are so freaking dense.”

[…]

The moment I saw this I cried. I don't ever care if that's crazy. I CRIED.THANK YOU BLIZZARD!

The China Problem

There was a whole section of this debate relating to China. Some players saw it as a shallow appeal to the Chinese market.

“The only reason Blizzard created Mists of Pandaria was to save their sinking ship. Only about 20% of WoW subs come from North America. Half of the subs come from Asia, and the rest are from Europe and other countries. To put it simple, Blizzard isn't solely surviving off of North American subs ..so they created Mists of Pandaria to appeal to the people from Asian countries.”

One response said:

”I wouldn't be suprised when Deathwing will be changed into a Charizard...”

To which another player replied,

”charizard is jap mate.”

Others took issue with all this blatant racism.

”Rather arrogant statement your making about how WoW should be a game aimed only for Americans and not rest of the world.

Old Asian culture is interesting it has nice potential of creating interesting zones and the story of that area has almost zero lore behind it. This gives Blizzard as a company to explore new idea's and gives them freedom that they didn't have before when trying to create a story.”

Some not only rejected the idea that MoP was meant to satisfy the Chinese, they accused it of being a carefully coordinated insult. They claimed the whole expansion was a caricature, which not only combined stereotypes from all across East Asia without regard for their origin, it also made a total mockery of them.

“Mists of Pandaria,” Blizzard’s latest expansion for their legendary massively multi-player online role-playing game “World of Warcraft,” is a high-resolution mishmash of every Asian stereotype available, sans poor driving and high grades — however untrue any of those stereotypes may be. From the dragon kites to the koi in various ponds, everything is all so Asian.

Notice I don’t say Chinese — though the humanoid pandas are certainly based more closely on the the Middle Kingdom’s history than the Land of the Rising Sun’s.

But it’s all so shallow — and borderline racist. The Pandaren speak in near “Engrish,” the dialogue is ripped straight from a midnight kung-fu film and some Pandaren have Fu Manchu mustaches. I’m already encountering lazy yin-yang themes that draw heavily on spirit worship and ancestor references.

It’s hard to dismiss this take. The Pandaren were not ‘cool’, like in the Sam Didier art, nor did they try to be. They were fat, goofy, greedy, lazy, characters with silly accents.

”Although they are anthropomorphic pandas and always have been, early sketches of the race depicted them as more muscular than chubby, and their samurai armor gave off an air of ferocity and strength. Now that the race has been made playable in Mists, they’ve been significantly de-fanged.” Sophie Pell wrote for NBC News. “Every pandaren has a belly, and they remark constantly how they love to eat, very similar to Po from the Kung Fu Panda franchise. They have not one, but two racial bonuses that apply to food.”

An NPR article criticised their portrayal:

“To be completely honest, I don't know what Blizzard was thinking when they announced the new Pandaren race and having them be known for their "Art of Acupressure"? Laughable.”

Commenting on the ‘wow-ladies’ blog, the user ‘Baisuzhen’ was also unhappy:

I'll be honest here. Being Asian Chinese in South East Asia, personally I am not entirely very fond of the entire theme itself, since it's practically my heritage/culture. The translated names are just cheesy beyond belief, as Blizzard literally translated many Chinese words/names directly.

Maybe also having grown up and surrounded by Chinese temples, culture, history etc, having to see all these in a predominantly fantasy land is just jarring to me. This is different from other Chinese MMOs that takes place in Ancient China as those are still Earth while Azeroth is definitely not. To have so many familiar themes, words, history and social nuances translated in a rather cheesy manner across just irritates me.

Again I would like to reiterate that this is my personal views and I am not attacking anyone.

Indeed, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, most of the player losses following the announcement of Mists came from Asia. Over a million of them dropped WoW and went to go… find something else for their whole lives to be about. And that was before MoP even came out. But if you’ve read my Cataclysm write-up, you’d know that 2012 was dominated by ‘Hour of Twilight’, an infamously hated patch which went on for over a year.

When confronted with the whole ‘racism’ issue in an interview with Wired, WoW Production Director J. Allen Brack dismissed concerns:

”We’ve always tried to make Warcraft very much its own thing. Certainly we have influences from all around the world. And certainly the panda is the symbol of China. Obviously, there’s a lot of influence, but it’s a very light touch of how much China it is or how much it is the rest of Asia. We just tried to take little bits here and there and incorporate it into our own thing.”

There were some who acknowledged the ‘problematic’ aspects of Mists, while also still wanting to play it.

I agree wholeheartedly that MoP is appropriating a wonderful culture and creating some kind of Disneyland trip.

So how do we respond? For those of us who DO want to play it, what kind of action should we take? Should I feel bad for even wanting to play it? What kinds of things would be critical to point out in a letter to Blizz? And would a letter do anything at this point in their creation of the new expansion? I've really been quarreling with myself about the expansion because I'm really excited to play it, while at the same time recognizing that it's culturally insensitive and there are several things I take issue with.

I’ve been all doomy and gloomy, but a lot of Chinese players responded positively to the expansion. One user from Beihang gushed about it in a Quora response:

”From my perspective, the MoP was really a shock to us. Blizzard does made it a fatastic game for us with lots of Chinese elements in the game, including the cute pandas, beautiful buildings in traditional Chinese style such as the WALL, the awesome BGMs made by some Chinese instruments, some of the famous characters in Chinese stroies...

What I really want to express is that, thank you Blizzard, thank you for working on such a wonderful masterpiece, thank you for carry out all these details, that really made us feel a special bond to see so many familar stuff in such a western background game.”

As if that wasn’t enough drama, there was a whole controversy in which Chinese players complained that there were non-Chinese elements in the expansion. Particularly here, in which a pillar has writing on it in gasp Japanese characters.

On Weibo – China’s Twitter equivalent – an angry user said:

“What’s the next chapter in World of Warcraft? The Mists of Pandaria! Everyone can fucking see you’re just trying to sweep up the mainland Chinese market again. So how is it that the fucking whole thing is full of Japanese culture, it makes me so disturbed!”

And another.

“[…] even though there are pandas [in the expansion], for the sake of the [game’s popularity] you mixed in Japanese culture. If you love Japanese culture so much, why didn’t you just make it Japanese monkeys [instead of pandas] and call it a day?”

Of course, WoW had always had Japanese influences.

”Have you seen how many tentacles Deathwing has? And that is just the beginning.”

In fact, the characters were not Japanese. They were ‘Pandaren’, a totally fictional script which Blizzard made up, and which Chinese players had just assumed was Japanese.

One Chinese commenter said it didn’t matter, because ‘Chinese people invented Japanese people and Korean people’, so it was all Chinese culture at the end of the day.

This reply sums everything up wonderfully in my opinion:

”To say that the Chinese have a bad past with Japan is like saying that a drinking a mixture of cyanide, rat poison, jet fuel and a bowl of lit matches is a bad idea. It's a HUMONGOUS understatement, so I would understand if blizzard didn't want to risk it.”

The Million-Man Beta

I usually wouldn’t discuss the betas in these threads. Every patch and expansion has a beta, so there’s not much to talk about. But MoP was different.

In a last-ditch effort to cling on to their subscribers, Blizzard made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The Annual Pass. If players simply committed to remaining subscribed for a single year, they would get three very tantalising things.

• A free digital copy of the heavily anticipated Diablo III

• An extremely sexy Diablo-themed mount, Tyreal’s Charger

• Guaranteed access to the Mists of Pandaria beta.

A whopping 1.2 million players signed up. It was a colossal success – I certainly continued paying long after I got bored and wanted to stop.

But there was a problem. Everyone got to see the expansion months before they had to buy it. They got to play through all of its content while Cataclysm was still out. And not only that – they saw all of its content while it was being developed.

I recall seeing broken combat, half-finished zones, crippling lag, server crashes, buggy quests, buildings without any textures. Personally, I loved the experience of ‘seeing behind the curtain’, but not everyone did. First impressions matter, and these people (many of whom were already wary about the concept to begin with) were not seeing Pandaria at its best. For those who didn’t get the Annual Pass, the internet was littered with first impressions and gameplay videos which exposed the half-finished expansion. Sometimes these online personalities laid out disclaimers about the nature of a beta. Sometimes.

It’s kind of surprising how incomplete it is. A couple of my buddies were in the Burning Crusade beta, and from what I saw and played it felt like a complete game that we were just basically stress testing. While I can’t speak for the WotLK or Cata betas, the Pandaria beta definitely caught me off guard in that context. Zones are still inaccessible, many animations are still missing, and overall it feels more like an alpha than a beta. Many quests are buggy and include testing notes in the quest text to get around the bugs

To make matters worse, World of Warcraft and the Beta took place on totally separate servers with separate launchers and installers. This had the added downside of splitting the World of Warcraft player-base. In a year when subscribers were already dropping, over a million of the most dedicated players simply disappeared from the main game. And it was really noticeable. Online communities came apart at the seams because so many of the old faces were off traipsing through the Beta.

Until then, the weeks and days preceding an expansion were filled with excitement. Many players have memories of waiting outside shops until midnight so they could storm inside and buy their copies of Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King, staying up until the early hours of the morning. When Mists of Pandaria finally released, there was very little of the usual fanfare. Everyone who wanted to see the expansion had already done it. A lot of them would be levelling through its zones for the second, third, or fourth time now.

Blizzard had shot themselves in the foot.

The Game Comes Out

And so, it was with a whimper, not a bang, that the expansion began. On the 4th October, the mists finally lifted. Blizzard sold only 2.7 million copies within the first week. Cataclysm had sold considerably more, within a single day. There were a few hiccups, such as the hilariously broken gyrocopter quest, but those are core to every expansion.

We’ve spent all this time focusing on the outrage, without ever looking at what people were outraged about. So here’s the lowdown on Mists of Pandaria.

During Deathwing’s world-breaking shenanigans, he disrupted the titular ‘Mists’, a supernatural veil which had hidden the Southern continent of Pandaria from the rest of the world for ten thousand years. Both the Alliance and Horde, finally free of a big bad to unite against, sent teams to explore the continent and plunder its resources.

The two factions encountered one another and quickly came to blows. The story revolved around this growing conflict, which consumed all of Pandaria. All that negative energy reawakened the Sha, a force unique to Pandaria, which began to corrupt everyone there. Especially Garrosh Hellscream, the leader of the Horde. Before Mists began, he dropped the Warcraft equivalent of a nuke on the alliance city of Theramore, which is what kicked off this whole faction war. He had always had… anger management issues, but gradually became more and more paranoid, vicious, and dangerous, to the point where most of the Horde turned on him and, with the help of the Alliance, besieged him in the Horde capital of Orgrimmar. But we’ll get to that.

There’s not a huge amount to say about Pandaren or Monks. Despite the massive dramas prior to release, they sort of faded into the background. The Pandaren get a stunning starter zone, which is actually the back of a giant turtle. But that’s it, really. The big thing with Pandaren was that they started neutral, and could choose a faction to join at level 10.

The furry community welcomed them with open paws. Until then, they had satisfied themselves with Worgen and Tauren, but the Disney-like designs of the Pandaren made them a firm favourite. I played on a Roleplay server and let me tell you, exploring the many hidden nooks and crannies of Pandaria was often a lot less rewarding than the developers intended. This was not the last time Blizzard threw a bone to the furries, but they were still half a decade away at this point.

There was a fun story of a Pandaren player called ‘Doubleagent’ who refused to choose a side, and instead reached max level without ever leaving the turtle, by picking flowers. It took him 8000 hours.

As of 2020, Pandaren are the least popular race in each faction, but when we combine the Pandaren on Horde and Alliance, they sit on par with most other races. Of course, they’re nowhere near the Night Elf/Human/Blood Elf trio, which makes up a majority of all players. But they haven’t been a failure by any means. Monks on the other hand remain the least played class, just below Shaman.

From my research, the problem seems to be that players are unable to separate Pandaren from Monks. Pandaren mages seem wrong, as do undead monks. So a lot of players seem less willing to be creative with them than other races or classes. Also, while the aesthetic of the Pandaren fits fantastically in Pandaria, it kind of clashes in any other setting.

Five Hundred Dailies of Summer

Overall, the continent of Pandaria was a mixed bag.

All players started in the Jade Forest, one of the most visually spectacular zones Blizzard has ever produced. It had a tightly written story and an excellent plot. There were dozens of hidden locations all around the zone that only max players could find, once they had unlocked flying.

the Jade Forest zone is hands-down my favorite place in WoW (LINKS TO REDDIT). I love flying around, looking at the little solitary houses on the earth pillars, and pretending my panda owns one of them.

I’m so lame, no need to tell me.

After Jade Forest, players could go to either the swampy, atmospheric Krasarang Wilds, or the fertile farmlands of the Valley of the Four Winds. By all accounts, this wasn’t a difficult choice. Players overwhelmingly preferred the Valley. At this point, the story became less linear, and players got more options that branched out across the game-world.

Next was the imposing mountains and plains of Kun Lai Summit. While I loved it, I know some players didn’t.

After that came another choice, this time between the expansion’s less popular zones, Townlong Steppes and Dread Waste. The latter was particularly controversial. It was designed as the dangerous homeland of the ‘Klaxxi’, and as such it was full of enemies – to the point where it was hard to get around without attracting constant attention.

In a Reddit rant (LINKS TO REDDIT), the user /u/hMJem echoed the feelings of most players.

I just hate everything about it. You enter the zone and it's clustered and just looks boring/ugly.

However not everyone agreed.

It's the only zone in MoP I actually like, exactly for the reasons that other people seem to dislike it. I think it pulled the "dark desolated corrupted wasteland" off perfectly, having only a few bits that are actually safe.

There was also the max-level zone Vale of Eternal Blossoms, another visually spectacular zone with an interesting story.

Overall, the expansion is considered to be one of, if not the most beautiful. The music also deserves a shout-out. While there was a narrative that proceeded from zone to zone, they remained disconnected. Each one focused on a totally different enemy – from the Yaungol to the Virmen to the Saurok to the Mogu to the Mantid to the Klaxxi. It was a lot to handle. However, Pandaria was absolutely brimming with lore. Someone at Blizzard had clearly spent months coming up with the history and culture of its various races, and it showed.

”If, pre-launch, you had told people they’d be getting one of the darkest WoW expansions ever, they’d have laughed at you. Early on, they’d still be laughing at you – there was a basic tale of how raw emotion can get the best of you in Jade Forest, but it was pretty light-hearted for most of the zone. Around Krasarang Wilds, it starts to turn darker, getting darker in Kun Lai Summit, and then ultimately leading to the odd brutality of Dread Wastes. There is a military excursion happening, a tale of what happens when a native people are pushed to the brink by a war that they are barely involved in.”

The levelling experience was well-received in general. But after that, things became a little more divisive.