Mists of Pandaria

[WindupAtheist]

Going to asume that at the very minimum there is at least one, possibly 2 full expantions left that they could wring the game for, without going full blown down the "make up completely off the wall shit to pad out expantions" route.

Yeah, but that's where they're going to end up regardless. They'll still be making WoW expansions in 2025.

Marketing-wise, I think Pandaria is a good idea what with the large Asian playing population.

I don't really see Asian players looking at these fat rice-paddy-hat-wearing wacky panda caricatures, with their culture slopped together from that of multiple countries that don't even really like each other, and going "Dude Blizzard totally gets us!" UO did the whole Asian-themed expansion thing to appeal to Asian players years ago, but in that case the content and target audience were explicity Japanese, not generically Asian, and they did it in a straightfaced way.

[Sheepherder]

No, you just don't get it.  Asians love obvious yet oblivious pandering.

[Simond]

Just a quick note...

The Emerald Dream is still out there and corrupted.

No it's not. One of Knaak's Marty Stu's fixed it in a novel prior to Cataclysm. That's why Mr. Elf-Bear-Chicken is awake again.

[Miasma]

It doesn't really matter but they've said none of the novels are to be considered canon.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It doesn't really matter but they've said none of the novels are to be considered canon.

Well the fact that ysera is running around being not-crazy would lend credence to the books which have been said are nit necessarily canon but lots of in game canon is still taken from them.

As to number of expansions? There's a schedule out there, we've all seen it.  Sure blizzard could keep doing them until the end of time but I believe they've planned when sargeras will be fought already and they aren't just going to hold onto that until there are 1mil left.  Once wow is on relative life support they will crank out retarded moon cat expansions but until then I expect them to try and retain as many as they can with core storylines.

As dumb as it is, pandaren are highly desired by the player base and as said before, you can still have a lot of story with azshara and the south sea isles.

[WindupAtheist]

No, you just don't get it.  Asians love obvious yet oblivious pandering.

Maybe some Asian MMO will add the Kodiakians, from the mystical land of Euromerica. Just big sentient brown bears. They'll run around wearing cowboy gear but with spiky Prussian helmets, smiting evil with their hockey stick cudgels and powering up by eating the national foods of Euromerica, escargot and burritos. Western players will no doubt deeply identify with and love this exciting race.

[Lakov_Sanite]

To be fair the pandas are Chinese/Japanese hybrids.  A much better comparison would be making them all Mexican cowboys that watched NASCAR wore cow bow boots and ate fajitas..... Oh, wait

[Merusk]

It doesn't really matter but they've said none of the novels are to be considered canon.

They said that so they Metzen can pick and choose from what they want to use in-game and aren't forced to alter some minutia just because one of the hired hacks decided, say, shaman had the power to make dwarves explode into gibblets when they drank.

[Paelos]

It doesn't really matter but they've said none of the novels are to be considered canon.

They said that so they Metzen can pick and choose from what they want to use in-game and aren't forced to alter some minutia just because one of the hired hacks decided, say, shaman had the power to make dwarves explode into gibblets when they drank.

So the novels aren't considered canon except for turning the king to stone and killing Cairne.

[Lantyssa]

Effectively they're canon until it's inconvenient for Metzen.

[Pantastic]

As to number of expansions? There's a schedule out there, we've all seen it.

You mean the schedule that matched up to the expansions that had come out and been announced when it hit the net (up to WOLK) but was completely wrong after (no Cataclysm at all)?

Maybe some Asian MMO will add the Kodiakians, from the mystical land of Euromerica. Just big sentient brown bears. They'll run around wearing cowboy gear but with spiky Prussian helmets, smiting evil with their hockey stick cudgels and powering up by eating the national foods of Euromerica, escargot and burritos. Western players will no doubt deeply identify with and love this exciting race.

That would be the most amazing expansion ever, and no I didn't forget green text.

[Paelos]

Effectively they're canon until it's inconvenient for Metzen.

They need to rez Cairne as a Panda.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Not sure what crack you are smoking but the one that's been on mmo champ for almost a tear now got fatalism right, not to mention wow brazil and the fact it revealed the name Titan before you know, blizzard said it would be their next mmo

[Pantastic]

Not sure what crack you are smoking but the one that's been on mmo champ for almost a tear now got fatalism right, not to mention wow brazil and the fact it revealed the name Titan before you know, blizzard said it would be their next mmo

It would help if you provided a link to whichever schedule you're talking about. If you're talking about the one I think you're talking about, it doesn't have any names or content information about WOW expansions, just estimated dates for the 4th and 5th, and certainly doesn't say that the 5th is the last, it's just the last one on the schedule. Guessing that the next to expansions will be 1.5 years apart just fits with what Blizzard has said about how often they plan to release expansions, it doesn't really seem like much new information. I don't really read much into someone knowing a codename for a next game, the whole point of using code names is that you don't have to worry too much about them being leaked, and it's been known for several years that Blizzard is working on a non-WOW MMO.

I just don't see where the schedule I think you're talking about says anything about having Sargeras in expansion 5 or ending at 5 or anything like that.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Google motherfucker, do you know it?  It's not up to mento research facts that you get wrong. No they never state the names of the next expacs nor do they say they will end but yes cataclysm and everything else on the list is accurate induing the new mmo so why exactly is it still a fake list? Do you need to fall on you head a few dozen more times before you subscribe go newtons law?

It is conjecture they will stop at five and I don't believe they will but I am willing to bet that the main storyline ends when the new mmo begins.

[Pantastic]

Google motherfucker, do you know it?  It's not up to mento research facts that you get wrong. No they never state the names of the next expacs nor do they say they will end but yes cataclysm and everything else on the list is accurate induing the new mmo so why exactly is it still a fake list? Do you need to fall on you head a few dozen more times before you subscribe go newtons law?

Google just gets me some schedule, it doesn't tell me if I got the one you were talking about. It is up to you to be clear about what you're actually talking about, and you still haven't actually said which schedule. I was talking about a DIFFERENT list when I talked about one being completely fake, that kind of thing happens when you refuse to clearly say what you're talking about. I'm not really sure what the schedule I think you're talking about has to do with this thread, since it doesn't say anything about what will be in the xpacs or when Blizzard will stop making them.

[Maledict]

I was going to say - bit of crossed wires going on here.

The most famous wow expansion list is the one pantastic is referring to. It's the one that lists a number of expansions, including level ranges, races and zone names. It's been around for a few years now, and was even known as 'the List'. It's completely fake. Te list was released just before Wrath, and had all the zone names up to wrath included, but people claimed it was released before TBC. (hence why people think it's correct - because it appeared to get TbC and wrath correct). Someone even admitted faking it a while back.

Lakov is referring to the Blizzard schedule which covers all their games, and has two more expansions on it. No names, no details,and the expansions are pretty much in the time slots you would expect for a WoW expansion. As it only goes 3/4 years into the future it doesn't list anything beyond the 5th expansion, but you would have to be mad to think that was the end of them. blizzard can keep making enemies up until the cows come home.

Not sure why that was so complicated or ended up in a shouting match but there you go - two, every separate lists. One fake but with lots of detail, one probably correct but with basically no detail at all and not really relevant to the discussion.

[Ingmar]

It doesn't really matter but they've said none of the novels are to be considered canon.

They said that about the RPG books, not the novels.

[Ratman_tf]

blizzard can keep making enemies up until the cows come home.

[Sheepherder]

They said that about the RPG books, not the novels.

It doesn't matter.  For Chris Metzen Chris Metzen isn't cannon.

[Miasma]

As dumb as it is, pandaren are highly desired by the player base and as said before, you can still have a lot of story with azshara and the south sea isles.

I don't know about "highly desired by the player base", I think there is a small group of people who are vocal about it.  As a percentage of people who actually post on the official forums I'm going to pull a number out of my ass and say they seem like 40% compared to 60% who think it's a terrible idea.  Now when we move to people who don't post/read the forums and don't know about an april fools joke from years ago I think their reaction to being told the new race is pandas will be "what the fuck".

The number of people who want them seems similar to the number that want other terrible ideas like 'vanilla only servers' or 'remove all guards from cities'.

[Merusk]

I'll agree it's a vocal minority.  It's like saying goblins were "highly desired by the playerbase" and then discovering, oh hey, they're below even Trolls in actual representation.

[Ingmar]

Well, any new race at this point is going to have a hard time competing with people's established mains, unless it has some kind of tremendously overpowered racial or something that makes people change their existing main INTO it.

[Rokal]

I don't think there is another race that a greater % of people want to be playable. People get hung up on the fact that the race was originally an April Fools joke, as though some developer thinking draenei should be a playable race while he was taking a shit was a much more noble origin. We don't know where the original idea for many things in the game came from.

I think something like this would look totally out-of-place in the game:



But if they are serious about adding Pandaren to the game, they are going to take a more serious approach to them. The only reason Tauren and Worgen don't look completely out of place is because they were given an art style that matched the game. Remember that the last 'official' pandaren thing Blizzard did was the statue.



Pandaren in the game would be somewhere in between the srsbsns statue and the furry convention flier that was the "Pandaren Express" joke image.

[Pantastic]

The most famous wow expansion list is the one pantastic is referring to. It's the one that lists a number of expansions, including level ranges, races and zone names.

And it's also the only one I've seen that mentions Pandarans as a playable race, that's why I thought of it here.

[Merusk]

Well, any new race at this point is going to have a hard time competing with people's established mains, unless it has some kind of tremendously overpowered racial or something that makes people change their existing main INTO it.

So what hideously overpowered racial do Worgen have that they outnumber Dranei? The 1% crit, the lack of a mount or the cool shapeshift feature?

[Rasix]

Well, any new race at this point is going to have a hard time competing with people's established mains, unless it has some kind of tremendously overpowered racial or something that makes people change their existing main INTO it.

So what hideously overpowered racial do Worgen have that they outnumber Dranei? The 1% crit, the lack of a mount or the cool shapeshift feature?

Not being goats.

[Merusk]

That explains why they both outnumber Dwarves and Gnomes, then.  Fuck shorties. 

[Rasix]

That explains why they both outnumber Dwarves and Gnomes, then.  Fuck shorties. 

I've yet to see a game where the midget races really take off.  I tend to play them if they're not hideous, but I don't see a lot of the mainstream gravitating toward them.

The dwarves in Rift are just horrid looking.  You don't see a lot of them.

[Ingmar]

Well, any new race at this point is going to have a hard time competing with people's established mains, unless it has some kind of tremendously overpowered racial or something that makes people change their existing main INTO it.

So what hideously overpowered racial do Worgen have that they outnumber Dranei? The 1% crit, the lack of a mount or the cool shapeshift feature?

Draenei were a new race too, and I believe worgen are considered the optimal DPS race for a number of classes.

I'm kind of surprised if worgen do outnumber draenei overall though, on my server there are draenei girls everywhere, they definitely replaced night elves as the dude-wants-to-play-hot-chick race of choice on Doomhammer.

[Pantastic]

So what hideously overpowered racial do Worgen have that they outnumber Dranei? The 1% crit, the lack of a mount or the cool shapeshift feature?

The game mechanics stuff helps, but really the big thing is that they're a bad-ass werewolf with a top hat. Horde races already have a lot of choices if you want to be a guy and look badass (orcs and tauren are big, trolls have the punk thing going, and undead are zombies), but the Alliance really falls short - night elves move weirdly, dwarves are tough but small, gnomes are silly, humans are big but a bit goofy-looking, draenei are bigger and goofier looking. I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of players pick their race by looks, since the mechanics benefits are so minor, and Worgen have a good look that you can't get somewhere else in the Alliance.

[Soulflame]

Well, any new race at this point is going to have a hard time competing with people's established mains, unless it has some kind of tremendously overpowered racial or something that makes people change their existing main INTO it.

So what hideously overpowered racial do Worgen have that they outnumber Dranei? The 1% crit, the lack of a mount or the cool shapeshift feature?

Tophats.

[Miasma]

While I don't like the idea of pandas in game that image of the panda with a box of noodles was from a second April fools joke that made fun of EQ2's /pizza command by pretending blizzard would be introducing a similar chinese food in-game option so it doesn't really represent what they would look like.

Still, fuck pandas.

[Lantyssa]

The game mechanics stuff helps, but really the big thing is that they're a bad-ass werewolf with a top hat.

They can also look like a human with the click of a button.  Same reason Blood Elves took over the Horde.  Draenei females have certain... assets... and pretty faces despite not looking human.

Most people like races they can identify with.

[SurfD]

As dumb as it is, pandaren are highly desired by the player base and as said before, you can still have a lot of story with azshara and the south sea isles.

I don't know about "highly desired by the player base", I think there is a small group of people who are vocal about it.  As a percentage of people who actually post on the official forums I'm going to pull a number out of my ass and say they seem like 40% compared to 60% who think it's a terrible idea.  Now when we move to people who don't post/read the forums and don't know about an april fools joke from years ago I think their reaction to being told the new race is pandas will be "what the fuck".

The number of people who want them seems similar to the number that want other terrible ideas like 'vanilla only servers' or 'remove all guards from cities'.

Actually, Pandaran have a bit more exposure in the WoW community then just the Pandaran Express April Fools Joke.   Anyone who played Warcraft 3 and did the Founding of Durotar bonus campaign has been wanting them represented in the game pretty much since WoW launched.  Considering that Chen Stormstout is a Pandaran Hero, who you had in your group for pretty much the ENTIRE campaign, and who had his own quest cameo in the barrens (Chens Lost Keg), it's not that far fetched to think that blizz might eventually do something with the race as a whole.