Mists of Pandaria

[Setanta]

In WC3 I played the Brewmaster as my first hero every opportunity I could. Damn it was a lot of fun with the bonus that it was a ... panda.

[Merusk]

He's also the reason the first 3 CE pets were Diablo, a Zergling and a Panda.  For those who didn't know why, now you do.

[Ingmar]

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.

It was an April Fool's Joke for War3 before they put Chen in the expansion - so it is technically correct to say it started as one.

[Miasma]

Yeah, the Pandaren express was the second time they were used as an April fool's joke.  We already had a quote either here or in the cracks thread where it started as a Warcraft III April fools joke and the guy who did it was like "you can't be serious they don't really want this shit do they it was a God damn joke".

This, this was a fucking April Fool's joke and for good reason.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Warcraft has not been about srs bzns for a long time now. Once the goblins got added, all bets were off.

[Fordel]

Warcraft was never serious business, at least from War2 onward. I never actually played War1.

[Ingmar]

They've always stacked the serious and the silly right up next to each other, yeah.

[Sjofn]

It's funny hearing the "there's even more trolls than goblins" thing. On Moon Guard, I have no idea what the breakdown is, but there are a lot of EVERYONE there. Blood elves win, but I'd have to say it's probably taurens or orcs I see the least of, not trolls (or goblins). RPers love inflicting the troll accent on people, I guess. And a LOT of them are druids. I've only seen one troll warlock though.

[Merusk]

Census says orcs & goblins are 11% of Horde RP pops, Trolls & Undead are 13%, Tauren are 16% and elves are 36%

That's actually.. kind of depressing.

[Lantyssa]

It's funny hearing the "there's even more trolls than goblins" thing. On Moon Guard, I have no idea what the breakdown is, but there are a lot of EVERYONE there. Blood elves win, but I'd have to say it's probably taurens or orcs I see the least of, not trolls (or goblins). RPers love inflicting the troll accent on people, I guess. And a LOT of them are druids. I've only seen one troll warlock though.

I would have made a Troll Warlock had it been an option at the time.  It's the only reason I have an undead at all.

[El Gallo]

It's funny hearing the "there's even more trolls than goblins" thing. On Moon Guard, I have no idea what the breakdown is, but there are a lot of EVERYONE there. Blood elves win, but I'd have to say it's probably taurens or orcs I see the least of, not trolls (or goblins). RPers love inflicting the troll accent on people, I guess. And a LOT of them are druids. I've only seen one troll warlock though.

Aren't there a lot of, ahem, unique player-driven activities on MoonGuard that could easily lead to an unusual race distribution there?

[Ingmar]

That's mostly Alliance-side. (Which is not to say that Silvermoan City hasn't earned its name.)

[Fordel]

Really, not as many as you'd think.


Like yes, if you wander around in the right places your totally going to overhear shit you never ever wanted to hear.




The big difference between an RP server and a normal server, is instead of just standing in the middle of town afk waiting for your Queue to pop, the RP people make an effort to act like they are doing stuff in town. Even if it's just sitting at a bar pretending to drink while they wait for their BG/Dungeon to pop.

[Sjofn]

It's funny hearing the "there's even more trolls than goblins" thing. On Moon Guard, I have no idea what the breakdown is, but there are a lot of EVERYONE there. Blood elves win, but I'd have to say it's probably taurens or orcs I see the least of, not trolls (or goblins). RPers love inflicting the troll accent on people, I guess. And a LOT of them are druids. I've only seen one troll warlock though.

Aren't there a lot of, ahem, unique player-driven activities on MoonGuard that could easily lead to an unusual race distribution there?

Like Ingmar said, that's mostly Alliance side. I also don't actually go the places the Horde-side perverts tend to congregate (SMC and Brill, of all places), so that wouldn't really skew my perception much. Plus you'd think I'd see a lot more tauren. 

[sinij]

The big difference between an RP server and a normal server

I very much agree. They might as well cal it Prev Servers.

[Sheepherder]

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.

Umm, no.  They're still fucking stupid.

[Ingmar]

They don't bother me any more than say, furbolgs.

[Sheepherder]

The grotesque Asian stereotype doesn't bug you a little?

[Malakili]

The grotesque Asian stereotype doesn't bug you a little?

Seriously?  Look at WoW, and THIS is the one thats going to send you over the edge? Practically every race in the game is a stereotype of something.

[caladein]

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.

In the US/Europe (all the numbers here are combined US and Europe) they don't at level cap and barely do in the overall numbers.

As for Goblins, it's simple really.  If your new race isn't a Human or an Elf or doesn't have unique access to a class when it releases, it's going to be second tier, at best.  Of course, when you combine the two, we all know what happens.

At level cap, if you subtract all the Blood Elf Paladins, Blood Elves are still the most popular race on the Horde .

[El Gallo]

That's mostly Alliance-side.

Whew. When nobody answered my come-ons in Mulgore, I thought I was ugly 

[Sjofn]

Naw, you just needed to go to Silvermoon, baby.

[Ingmar]

The grotesque Asian stereotype doesn't bug you a little?

If they were hitting some existing Asian stereotype it probably would, sure, but I'm not aware of "oh those Asians, they're all fat goofy drunks" being an existing vector of racism. (That's for Scotsmen.  ) My Asian friends who play have complained quite a bit more about that shirtless Woo Ping weapon skill trainer guy in Stormwind than about the pandas. I freely admit I could be wrong and it would bug people in general though.

See also: the great success of Kung Fu Panda in China, which would seem to indicate there's no broad "WHY MUST YOU MAKE US BE FAT PANDAS" backlash waiting to happen. I guarantee Blizzard saw that and their eyes turned into cartoon dollar signs.

[Paelos]

The panda faction mount should be a rickshaw that they pull for their friends. With the left turn signal always blinking.

That would be getting closer to the racist stereotypes.

[Rokal]

As for Goblins, it's simple really.  If your new race is ugly or doesn't have unique access to a class when it releases, it's going to be second tier, at best.

Fixed that for you.

The grotesque Asian stereotype doesn't bug you a little?

Considering how slim Pandaren are on details right now, they're much less stereotypical than say Tauren.

[Ingmar]

Yeah the giant peace pipes always struck me as a little much.

[Mrbloodworth]

This thread got all Wow'd up.

[Rasix]

Tends to happen in WoW threads.

[Mrbloodworth]

Haha, wrong tab. My bad, its been a long day.

[Setanta]

At level cap, if you subtract all the Blood Elf Paladins, Blood Elves are still the most popular race on the Horde .

When I look at the breakdown of my characters:

On release - Male Tauren Hunter, Male Tauren Shaman, Female Orc Warrior, Female Troll Mage, Female Human Paladin
Now - Male Tauren Hunter, Male Tauren Shaman, Male Tauren Warrior, Female Tauren Druid, Female Elf Mage, Female Elf Paladin, Female Elf DK, Female Elf Warlock, Priest, Rogue

Tauren have always been the best looking Horde models imo - Male Orcs look ok but I can't get into the whole green thing, Troll females are ok until you get to the feet. I'd rather look like a badass Indian/hippie cow or female Elf then the old, dated and aesthetically average models. Having said that, my priest is going to the cow-side and I'm thinking of goblin mage for a tiny bit more variety.

I wish Blizzard would revisit the older race models

[Amaron]

I wish Blizzard would revisit the older race models

I used to say this till they butchered goblins.

[Rokal]

I wish Blizzard would revisit the older race models

I used to say this till they butchered goblins.

This is why they'll probably never update the old models. Invariably there will be some loud % of their players that liked the old models better, regardless of the changes that are made. Doesn't matter much anyway, considering how much of your character model is covered by armor at level cap.

[Rasix]

I wish Blizzard would revisit the older race models

I used to say this till they butchered goblins.

I thought my gobbie looked pretty awesome.  So, yah..

Still probably better to not all of the sudden change the basic appearance of someone's toon they played for 5+ years, without at least making it optional for them to see it on their end.  I think in EQ you could toggle Velious models on/off.

[Merusk]

You could.  Many people complained about the Velious models but I always thought they looked worlds better.  Probably because I played a Half Elf and a Dark Elf.  I can understand Ogres and Trolls being upset. The original models were kind of iconic.

[Sjofn]

I wish Blizzard would revisit the older race models

I used to say this till they butchered goblins.

wat


Goblins are head and shoulders above every other race right now looks-wise, including the worgen (especially the female worgens, ugh). You may not like how they look in an aesthetic sense (which ... OK, I guess), but they have more life and detail in their left hand than the vanilla races have in their entire bodies.

Also I have no idea how people play female blood elves. Their in-combat noises are so fucking irritating and their melee combat animations are stupid (actually, I guess they're OK if you're a rogue, but that's it).

My breakdown race-wise for the Alliance is dwarf lady paladin (originally human lady), dwarf lady warrior, human lady DK, night elf dude druid, plus six lesser alts (two gnomes, another dwarf, a draenei, and two more night elves that are all ladies). Horde goes dude blood elf paladin, dude blood elf rogue, dude blood elf mage, orc lady hunter, plus six lesser alts (one forsaken, one tauren, two goblins, two trolls). The two goblins are up and coming, in theory I play those with my friends who never log in any more, though, so they stalled. :P