Mini-Gametalk 2: In Defense of Mists of Pandaria

After being semi-enraged at the idiotic fanbase League of Legends happens to spawn out of its murky ELO Hell (not really, I’m pretty much hooked on to the game), I published a small piece a long time ago telling any and all who listened the origins of the DotA styled games.

Now I feel like I must clarify yet another point in the PC gaming world, this time revolving around the recently released cinematic trailer for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

So what’s the idiotic assumption going around the internet that needs correction? Well it’s a rather simple point that I feel that I need to clarify here.

But before I start, I might as well confess this: ALL OF THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT CINEMATIC TRAILERS ARE FREAKING AWESOME. Burning Crusade with its intensity, Wrath of the Lich King with its mood, Cataclysm with its impending doom, and now Mists of Pandaria with its mysteriousness. I digress-

The Problem: A lot of people who watched the cinematic trailer kept mentioning how the trailer is based off of Kung Fu Panda.

Let’s get the stupid part out of the way first. Kung Fu Panda was an animated movie made in 2008 by Dreamworks Animation that featured a hapless Kung Fu aspirant Panda named Po who later becomes a great fighter. It was a decent movie in my opinion, Jack Black did pretty well.

So now to the explanation part. First, I asked myself, “Are these kids for real?” I grew up with Warcraft III and I honestly have NEVER played World of Warcraft. But even I knew that the Pandaren character existed before Kung Fu Panda existed. Is it safe to assume that the large number of WoW players have not played the previous games that put in place the entire universe in WoW?

Well let’s clarify the points right now. The initial introduction of the Pandaren race and lore spawned during the release of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne that was released back in 2003. Samwise Didier, a rather famous individual from Blizzard created the idea of the “Panda Race” in an April Fools Joke and the suprisingly positive feedback basically established the Pandarens into the lore. They even gave put the neutral hero: Pandaren Brewmaster in the actual game.

So the idea of the Pandaren was prevalent since the early 2000’s, the Pandaren Character: Chen Stormstout was an optional but famous character that played a key role in both the lore and the Bonus campaign that was available in Frozen Throne. Chen Stormstout is also the Pandaren that kicked the ork and human’s asses in the cinematic.

I’ll be back later to steal your time even more

So the correction lines goes as thus. The martial-arts mastering Panda race present and featured in the new World of Warcraft expansion set was NOT inspired by the the movie that featured a panda who loved kung fu.

thanks for listening and good night.