Wow Blizzard never disappoints with their Cinematics this was Bad-ass. Definitely will be enjoying my monk alt!

Yeah, Blizzard makes absolutely amazing CGI trailers. It's too bad that the quality of their games hasn't kept pace...

I always loved the Pandaren Brewmaster in WC3.

Creston

So they made a whole expansion out of Kung Fu Panda?

They should have focused the introduction video on the theme of the expansion which is the coming war between the Horde and the Alliance rather than an extended introduction of the Pandaren.

It's a fun video but I can't say I really enjoyed it as far as an opening cinematic is concerned. Past expansion openings gave you an idea of what's going on whereas this just throws Pandaren at your face as a way of saying 'YEAH! PANDAS! LOOK!!!' while giving little to no attention to anything else like the Shas or the broken relations between the Horde and Alliance.

Yeah, it's pretty sad that about the only thing ActiBlizz does right anymore are CGI trailers. But much like Fleetwood Mac, ain't never goin' back again.

"You've ended Deathwing's destructive rampage and saved the dragonflights from extinction.

Welll, not YOU, because YOU quit before that was put into the game, because we made the trip from 80 to 85 so short you beat all the story quests in 2 months when it took you a year to do Wrath. But someone...yeah...someone beat Deathwing. So you can come back and play this expansion. You know, if you're not too busy with GW2 and stuff.

Please?

I'm a little stunned. Instead of coming out at critics calling this the Kung Fu Panda expansion, they full-on embraced it as kung fu panda.
I'd probably be excited if I was 8.

I'd sort of been considering going back to see it and level one more character again, if they showed that it was something more than "the kung fu panda expansion", and instead they go with a trailer that says that's exactly what it is. It seems impossibly arrogant, in a way; a few years ago the challenge that everyone was going to play it anyway was probably true but now I'm not so sure.

You guys all realize that Pandarens were around long before Kung Fu Panda, right?

Agent.X7 wrote on Aug 16, 2012, 12:43:

"You've ended Deathwing's destructive rampage and saved the dragonflights from extinction.

Welll, not YOU, because YOU quit before that was put into the game, because we made the trip from 80 to 85 so short you beat all the story quests in 2 months when it took you a year to do Wrath. But someone...yeah...someone beat Deathwing. So you can come back and play this expansion. You know, if you're not too busy with GW2 and stuff.

Please?

Well, I defeated Deathwing back in February. It made me realize that Blizzard's raid and dungeon design team has no creativity left, so I promptly canceled my account and haven't looked back.

GW2 in 8 days 13 hours!

Cool, the next Kung Fu Panda movie has orcs and humans in it!

Agent.X7 wrote on Aug 16, 2012, 12:52:
You guys all realize that Pandarens were around long before Kung Fu Panda, right?

There's no point bothering. It's been "lol Kungfu Pandas!!!" for the last year regardless of how monumentally boring that's got. Inevitably someone will escalate to "Pandas? lol WoW kids stuff now!1!! I r too manly and just too fuckin' cool for Pandas!!"

I've played the beta and I like it a lot, the new zones are bright and well done, I enjoy the aesthetics and I like the increased focus on having lots of different things to do other than run sodding dungeons forever.

Jonny wrote on Aug 16, 2012, 13:43:
There's no point bothering. It's been "lol Kungfu Pandas!!!" for the last year regardless of how monumentally boring that's got.

Blizzard has trouble moving on from that point too apparently, judging by the trailer's focus. Just sayin.

On a side note, are the expansion features actually all implemented in game this time? I remember people getting understandably upset after they advertised some features on the game boxes but weren't actually in game (Aerial PvP and something else I forget).

This comment was edited on Aug 16, 2012, 14:15.

As far as I know everything they've promised for this one is in the beta and will make it to the final product. Whether or not they can keep their promise of updating the world and story of the war patch by patch remains to be seen.

Blizzard has trouble moving on from that point too apparently, judging by the trailer's focus. Just sayin.

Martial arts fighting anthropomorphic Pandas are a cliche that predates Warcraft and Kung Fu Panda. It's not a thing I'm particularly fond of, but I'm content to tolerate it because I'm enjoying everything else so far. That doesn't make the inevitable and endless torrent of people apparently thinking they're the first to make the connection any less tedious though.

Welll, not YOU, because YOU quit before that was put into the game, because we made the trip from 80 to 85 so short you beat all the story quests in 2 months when it took you a year to do Wrath.

Pretty much sums up my exact experience with cataclysm.

Having said that, I recently reinstalled, and I'm enjoying it (w/o raiding). I think one of WOWs biggest problems is the folks that are burnt out and don't realize it. After being gone for a year and a half, the next expansion looks quite a bit more enjoyable.

I'll give them their due, Blizz does CG intros better than almost anyone else (I still love the fall of Arthas one from WC3 was it?).

That being said, I've got little interest in going back to WoW for another crack at the same old same old.

Jonny wrote on Aug 16, 2012, 13:43:
There's no point bothering. It's been "lol Kungfu Pandas!!!" for the last year regardless of how monumentally boring that's got. Inevitably someone will escalate to "Pandas? lol WoW kids stuff now!1!! I r too manly and just too fuckin' cool for Pandas!!"

Well, since you seem to be more or less replying to me with that, take a step back and look at what they have here. People have indeed been "lol Kungfu Pandas!!!" for the last year.

And then, with no attempt at dissuading that, Blizzard approaches that by releasing this Kung Fu Panda trailer.

They had a chance to do something that woos people back to the game and reminds everyone that this is World of Warcraft, with epic battles and For the Horde! and the perseverance of the Alliance in the face of these evils, and instead... you get reinforcement of the Kung Fu Panda meme.

Maybe it's just me, but I left after Cataclysm and this does absolutely nothing that suggests to me that they care if I come back. That's disappointing.

Sorry, I wasn't aiming specifically at you or anyone else at Blues. I'd just come back from reading the Youtube comments on this and they were all just a big cycle of "lol kung fu panda">"Pandaren predate Kung Fu Panda">"Lol pandas WoW is for kids now." The exact same shit that's been regurgitated over and over for the last year.

I don't care that people are poking at Blizzard, they can do that as much as they like, just that as someone who plays WoW and reads WoW related sites these comments have reached an unprecedented level of utter tedium and predictability.

On the content of the cinematic itself, I don't like Pandaren very much and agree with you that a good showing of the Alliance and Horde at each other's throats would have been a lot better. However I can see where they're coming from with it, they're showing the new race, the new class, the new land and the renewed conflict.

It's unfortunate, but I doubt you could show a class based on martial arts, a humanoid panda race and a land based on Asian aesthetics without drawing parallels with another recent humanoid panda martial artist from Asia.

Chinese-accented English narration? Really, Blizzard? As if the temples, rice paddies, bamboo hats, kung fu, architecture, vertical "stone forest" mountains, and PANDAS weren't hint enough?

haha kung fu panda MMO...

they should make the Kool-Aid guy the next character class, he comes from Kool-Aidia

While well done and entertaining, it's a bit silly for an expansion intro. I guess that's their new target audience though.

Thinking back on how I felt after watching the first BC or Wrath trailer and comparing it to this....thing. How the mighty have fallen.