Because the Pandaren have been around longer than Kung-Fu Panda. You know, sort of like the Book of Revelations has been around longer than any apocalyptic metal songs? Well, OK, KFP probably isn’t so much inspired by the Pandaren as inspired by the same sources as the Pandaren, but the Pandaren still were first. So was Karma 1/2, by the way.
They don’t have to be on the same server, no. Part of the Scroll’s benefit is you get a free character transfer/faction change option with it if you want to move to the offering party’s server/faction, but my understanding is they aren’t required.
I said “ripped-off”, as in the Pandaren on the whole didn’t exist until after Kung-fu Panda did it’s thing. I did not say that they can’t be paralleled (they can). Nor in fact, did I say that Blizzard can’t have drawn inspiration from Po (the titular character in Kung Fu Panda) with some of what they did with building the Pandaren world/lore/continent for this expansion (the racials involving food other than beer, for example).
However, the Pandaren have existed since at least some point during Warcraft 3’s development, given there’s a hidden area in at least one original Warcraft 3 campaign where we directly find Samwise Didier’s April Fool’s Joke Pandaren–the Brothers in Blood portion of the Night Elf campaign, according to Wowpedia. Since Kung Fu Panda wasn’t announced until 2005 (or released until 2008), whereas Warcraft 3 was released in 2002 (and the Frozen Throne with the neutral Chen Stormstout as a playable hero character in the Orc campaign in 2003), unless Dreamworks started working on Kung Fu Panda a lot earlier than Wikipedia lets on (they say around 2004) AND Didier was aware of that way back in 2002, then “Kung Fu” Pandas in Warcraft Lore predates Kung Fu Panda, the movie, by years.
Then too, we have Nava’s point that a Panda Bear performing martial arts can be seen even earlier than that in anime. Nava said it was Karma 1/2 (presumably a typo, but maybe named differently in a different region?), but the main character of Ranma 1/2 has a father (Genma) who fell into the cursed Jusenkyo springs in China while undergoing martial arts training who subsequently transforms into a Panda when hit with cold water, and the manga on which that’s based dates back to 1987. So really, Kung Fu Panda and the Pandaren ripped off Ranma 1/2! 
(Incidentally, great anime, if you haven’t seen it/read it)
Honestly, if you have a problem with the Pandaren, shrug different strokes for different folks, but let’s at least get our facts straight.
I actually can get behind this criticism, to some extent. Levelling, especially the revamped pre-Burning Crusade old world areas, is trivial compared to the original vanilla WoW (or even better, the beta of Vanilla WoW for those of us who were lucky enough to play back then–it’s where my love of the Druid class started). As in, I can blaze up to level 25 in about 3 hours if I’m focused/serious enough, with full heirlooms. However, for most people, especially those first trying the game without heirlooms, presenting a vanilla WoW levelling challenge (let alone going back even earlier to Everquest-style MMO challenge) is somewhat daunting and wasn’t, quite frankly, all that fun, so I get why they made levelling easier.
I’ve got two names reserved for my Monk character, currently. TinyShhLube and Monkeyspaw. I’m torn as to which one I really want for when Mists drops. I’m presently leaning towards Monkeyspaw, but I could be convinced otherwise at this point.
Early morning brainfart. Unforgivable too, since I reread my Ranmas just last week.
I haven’t been logging on much myself either. Knowing that a new expansion is scheduled to drop soon removes much, if not all, of the motivation to run level 85 dungeons and Looking for Raid groups just to get tokens for gear. I’m sure that (just as with every other expansion) the new green-level gear that’ll be dropping during the level 86-90 quests will be superior to the purples I’m currently wearing/buying.
Once the expansion drops, I’m sure I’ll be back on more often. For now, I’m spending most of my time on SW:TOR and Diablo III, but the charms of both of them are starting to wear off – I’m realizing that far too many of the SW:TOR quests are just the same darn thing over and over again.
But it’ll be good to get some regular gaming time in with my Belf paladin again.
I think it’s probably fairer to say not that Blizzard ripped the martial-arts panda concept off KFP, but rather that the success of KFP probably started them thinking “Hey, maybe this thing we originally waved off as a joke could actually be pulled off. People liked KFP, they’ll probably like Pandaren.”
I’m just speculating, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if KFP inspired the current Pandaren design, even if the concept of Pandarens existed first.
Bosstone, players have been actively asking for the Pandaren since vanilla; it’s not what one would call a new request. And as for “inspire the design”, there is only so far you can go with “Chinatown Panda”.
I’m looking forward to this expansion to the point I’ve put aside Diablo 3 temporarily to let it work out its initial kinks (a strategy that looks to be paying off so far). I’ve already pre-ordered the collector’s edition.
I’m not the typical player – I don’t want to raid or do instances anymore, and I took my time with Cataclysm to the point that I actually just wrapped up the Twilight Highlands zone and Firelands dailies two weeks ago – so this will probably sound boring. For MoP, I’m looking forward to leveling to the new cap, extending my achievements and crafting OCD, trying new rogue builds, and unloading my huge cloth, gems, and enchanting mats stash as new toons level their skills. I’ll make a panda and try Monk, but I don’t expect to be distracted from my main. I still have a backlog of vanilla, BC, Wrath, and Cata things to do, so I expect MoP content will see me through another couple of years.
Quoting from one section on the earlier linked WoWpedia page for the history of the Pandaren in game:
Supposedly, a gaming magazine was brought to Blizzard’s offices in the **fall of 2005 **to view the Burning Crusade expansion pack for the first time. There were dozens of posters and artwork depicting the pandaren as the new Alliance race. This rumor goes on to suggest the race was then canceled for reasons concerning “pandas being a sacred animal” in China, or with the “political problems [associated with a] Japanese/Chinese hybrid”, in WC3 beta, pandaren wore samurai armor, but this was soon fixed.[2] Other gaming sources stated that when “mentioning the ex-April-Fool’s-joke Pandaren Empire to Blizzard staff got a surprisingly cagey response…” Blizzard would not confirm or deny these rumors directly until BlizzCon 2011, when Chris Metzen confirmed during an interview with Direct TV that the pandaren were indeed the original Alliance race for The Burning Crusade, but about halfway through the development of BC they were replaced with the draenei.
The Pandaren were actually half-way into the game before/at the same time as Kung Fu Panda the movie was announced (Fall 2005 per Wikipedia). My suspicion is that removing them from the BC expansion and replacing them with the Draenei was actually a decision involving the inevitable outrage from Horde-side players that it would be an alliance only race (particularly since Chen, while a neutral hero, was involved with Rexxar in the Orc Campaign of The Frozen Throne).
It honestly wouldn’t shock me at all if they took elements directly or indirectly from Kung Fu Panda for this expansion. As stated earlier, one of the Pandaren racials is increased cooking skill (Bonus 15 points) and another is Double stat benefit from being Well-fed, both of which could be in reference to Kung Fu Panda (been awhile since I’ve watched it) with Po’s training/fighting style being influenced by using food as a motivator. And honestly, this doesn’t bother me at all. Blizzard has always thrown in pop culture references liberally throughout the game. Shoot, half of Uldum questing was an Indiana Jones movie rip-off/homage (reader’s choice, since most either loved or hated that quest-chain).
Speaking of cooking, they’ve changed it so it now has 6 specialties to be levelled once you hit Zen Master Skill and 530 skill points, each of which can be taken to 600 skill points. Each specialty is supposed to focus on one particular main stat to buff (Grill = Strength, Oven = Stamina, Pot = Int, Steamer = Spirit, Wok = Agility, Still = Getting Drunk), so characters can choose to level only the one(s) relevant to their spec(s) or can work on all 6. I think Farming is also tied into it if players want, though I actually stopped playing the beta so I can experience some of this first hand when the expansion goes live.
Not at all. It would be a very dry world if artists didn’t “rip off” other artists. But your one-sentence post about the issue was pretty vague, as in “There’s no way WoW would “rip off” other mediums.” [See: the aforementioned EverQuest]. I’ve actually never cared enough about the matter to do even the cursory level of research you seem to have done. So, my ignorance is cured, and I think we’re straight now.
[QUOTE=JayRx1981]
…so I get why they made leveling easier
[/QUOTE]
This is why they made leveling easier: $$
Well, Patch 5.0.4 went live today, setting the stage for the MoP expansion.
Lots of changes, and so far I don’t like any of them.
My main is a mage, and wands are now useless items, since I can’t equip them with any other weapon.
The changed all the Prime glyphs to major glyphs, but took away the 3 Prime slots, so now I have 2x the glyphs and half the slots to put them in.
Glyphs in general seem pretty much useless now anyway, so maybe that’s a break even thing.
The new so-called talent trees are crap. They’re obviously designed so that if you are a certain spec you use all the talents in that spec; I can’t help but wonder why they even bothered unless it’s just to provide players with the illusion that they’re making meaningful choices about their character.
Mana is capped at 100k, unless you’re a druid Guardian.
Head enchants are gone.
I’m actually regretting pre-ordering MoP at this point. Maybe that will change in a week or two, after the folks at EJ crunch numbers and tell us all how to play, but at the moment I’m not happy about the sweeping changes made to WoW.
What are y’all’s thoughts so far?
New patch hasn’t been active long enough for me to form a decent opinion. It’s not the first patch making sweeping changes, but it has been awhile.
I’m thinking of getting back into WoW at least briefly with the new expansion. I did very little endgame stuff in Wrath and even less in Cata (barely even ran 5-mans) because I was too busy. I do like questing, though, and Blizz keeps getting better and better at making quest content.
I’m currently unable to log in due to update download issues. Did they not update the stats on existing wands? I read today that the plan was to give wands (and other ranged weapons) the same stat budget as 2-handed weapons.
I’ve merged Snowboarder Bo’s new thread into this one, as it’s just a few days old and covers the same ground.
- Gukumatz,
Game Room Moderator
Here in Europe the patch is deploying today so not played this yet but have to address some of these issues, beta experience only.
Yep now all characters can only equip one weapon this includes Hunters who now only have a ranged weapon. To compensate for this loss all ranged weapons have had their stats increased so as a mage you can run with a staff or wand or dagger. I like this change myself, my warlock does not need to carry a huge bit of wood to kill mages…
Some classes have useful glyphs but I think the aim was to make glyphs choices less mandatory which is a good thing. A lot of the minor glyphs are now cosmetic and fun rather than the former ‘Spell X now costs 50% mana’ type of nonsense, I know my warlock will have the water walking while mounted on the Felsteed glyph for BGs.
So you prefer the old system with no choices whatsoever? The old ‘increase crit by 1%’ talents? How odd. Some talents need to be worked on, druids as mentioned previously and the top level warlock talents are meh, but now you get genuine choices with very few must haves. Though of course what talents to take for each encounter will be theorycrafted soon enough.
All about the regen now, not sure how this will play out but my key bind for Life Tap will be moved to something I can hit a lot.
Not sure why they didn’t give head enchants to engineers say, would have been good.
I am excited at the warlock changes especially to Demonology and can’t wait to log on tonight to sort out my new keys and Weak Auras and to die a lot in TB.
Thanks, Guk; I missed this thread when I scrolled down.
I got on last night to look at the new talents/glyphs. I like the cosmetic glyphs. I too am waiting for EJ or Noxxic to help me with my new rotations. I have yet to run any dungoens or raids. Maybe this weekend I’ll have some time. I used to have a sword, an offhand and a wand equipped, now I only have the sword and offhand. Where did my wand go to? It’s not in my bag:( I got mailed some weird potion (actually x2), so I’m wondering if something got lost.
I should probably rebuild my UI since I’m relearning everything anyway.
“The Launcher is optimizing your World of Warcraft install.”
This is the first time I’ve seen this, although this is also the first PC I’ve used to play the game. Does this happen with every patch or just this one?