Samtemdo8 said:
Mostly because they were the face of an entire expansion.
I mean they didn't make a whole expansion out of the Walrus people in Wrath of the Lich King.
Lots of things have been 'faces' for expansions, the expansion usually dealt with things outside them.
BloatedGuppy said:
I will concur, however, that a race of Panda people living on an Asian-flavored continent called "Pandaria" is faintly ridiculous. You can go back to the oft-lionized WC3 for that stupid fucking name though.
As opposed to native American-themed minotaurs living in a place called Thunder Bluff?
Or inuit-themed walrus people living in a place called Northrend?
Or Jamaican-themed trolls living in a place called Stranglethorn?
The idea of taking a non-humanoid race based on a real-world culture was done plenty of times before the pandaren, yet suddenly it became a problem then. Also, the pandaren aren't the only sapient species in Pandaria either, so, what, the mantid (insect people), mogu (terecotta people), jinju (fish people), and hozen (monkey people) get a free pass?
Even if the argument is made that pandaren were the "face" of MoP (same way blood elves and draenei were the "face" of BC, so that again feels like a double standard), the expansion dealt with more than just them.
wizzy555 said:
Yes but it was suppose to be a joke. It was the artist's calling card to insert pandas into his work, then they came up with a joke lore reason to explain why panda faces were appearing everywhere.
Don't recall any of that. Pandaren didn't appear everywhere, it started off as an April Fools joke that led to the brewmaster being included in TFT. The pandaren's lore wasn't fleshed out until after WC3 in the RPG books. What I also remember is that prior to MoP, lots of people were clamouring for pandaren (in that they'd reguarly come up as a selected race), but when they WERE included, lots of people did a 180.
The actual inclusion of pandaria was most likely to penetrate the Chinese market.
Even if that's true, Pandaria was fleshed out in lore before it appeared in-game.