Pandaren have a hell of a lot more to do with Warcraft than messianic, floating heiroglyphs or bandage wrapped, energy based space gypsies do - both of which were added during the beloved Burning Crusade expansion.

Kael'Thas Sunstrider says hello and hopes you enjoyed the new fights in Wrath.

 

They were birthed out of an April Fool's Joke.

 

Yes they were. Then fans fell crazy in love with them, so Blizzard added them into the Warcraft III expansion and worked them into the overall lore of the Warcraft universe.

 

Why would Pandaren be any worse than Tauren?
One are panda-people and the other are cow-people.

 

http://www.planetdiablo.com/diablo3/preannouncement/introduction/history.shtml

http://gamerant.com/diablo-3-images-cancelled-version-2005-jc-68367/

I agree with you on how shitty it is that D3 will be online only. I expect players will eventually make an offline version possible though. Fingers crossed.

It sounds bad at first glance, I guess. But when you think about it, does it matter where ideas come from? It seems to me the only thing that matters is how that idea turns out in the end.

The only problem I've ever really had with Pandaren was actually more about people acting like it was so awesome and clever that they drink alcohol and do kung fu. Like it'd never been done before. Same thing with all the Gnome punting and Gnome eating jokes. It was never funny and just made me want to avoid the whole thing.

 

I'm willing to bet that people are going to crack D3 and make it SP, as well. Which won't surprise me in the least. (What really disappoints me with D3 is the "no singleplayer", and the main reason I'm not buying it). And they'll probably make private servers like they did for WoW (WoWScape was the most well known and most popular for at least 2 or 3 years until their server owner "Payton" or whatever was sued by Blizzard and shut down). But by that time the Payton's server was turned to absolute garbage by having the server population limit too high so the server lagged real bad on the weekends, and the GM's were total assholes in 2009. I remember reading that she made over a $100K in money per month, but was told that was faked or some shit. Though it wouldn't surprise me if she really was making that much per month. I can see why Blizzard sued her ass. She should have hosted it somewhere else, other than the US (assuming she didn't), then she probably could have told Blizzard to "gtfokthxbye".

As for the "canceled" screenshots. Those looked pretty nice. I haven't seen any video's or screenshots of the new version of the game yet, so I can't really comment on that. Unless those are the new ones, but somehow, I just don't think so. It does say "canceled", so I'm assuming they're the originals the team was working on.

I remember when the original Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War game was released back in 2004. Even that game had better graphics than SC2 does, and it's quite a few years younger. For some reason, I just don't like SC2's graphics, (not really sure why) but it just disappoints me that Blizzard could have done slightly better.

All the money they're getting from WoW just went to their fricken head. Though I think I'd really like a "WoW type Diablo game", and see what they could do with that. But knowing them, they'd probably fuck it up later like they're doing with WoW.

Edit: And the "Panda world" they created? Gtfo, as if I wanna see fricken live talking pandas in a game. What the hell does it serve, other than entertaining 5 year olds? God damn idiots.

 

Arakkoa are talking birds. Centaur are talking horses. Dryads are talking deer. Furbolg are talking bears. Gnolls are talking hyena. Kobold are talking rats. Naga are talking snakes. Nerubians are talking spiders. Quillboar are talking pigs. Taunka are talking bison. Tauren are talking cows. Tuskarr are talking walruses. Qiraji are various different species of talking insects.

Pandaren? Pandaren can go fuck themselves. They're talking pandas. That shit's for toddlers and clearly has no place in Warcraft.

 

Yep. Talking pandas are just inherently gay, while all those other animals work with a fantasy varnish.

Maybe you meant it sarcastically... but it's actually true.

 

That's beyond preposterous, Andro. Why would anthropomorphic Pandas be any worse than the other examples?

 

Because a lot of those other things listed there were actual mythological creatures and Pandaren are just LOLFurryPandas?

Then again, I'm of the opinion that Tauren are also retarded.

 

You guys are just feeling butthurt over pandas because you think you're too cool(or old) for it. They could add a murloc race for all I care and that wouldn't even factor into my decision of playing the game or not.

Now, monks does seem nice if they can really fit it into a heal while attacking role. I enjoy playing those...

 

I'm just amused at everyone's reasons for why the game is shit.

The reason it blows now is because anyone who has played any of the older expansions feels as though they've done the content already, but better! Remember Karazhan. Remember the music, and the surreal atmosphere. Remember the oddity of the boss fights and just how much fun the entire experience was.

Then go to Wrath. They still had it, somewhat. By then, Activision had already bought them out, and they were losing the RPG flair. But it was still there in little pieces. I mean, I remember honestly WANTING to kill Arthas. All throughout that expansion again and again you could feel the effects of the terrible things he was doing, and when we killed him I was jumping around the house like a goddamn madman. The gameplay elements were getting bland and used, and they didn't have the most interesting boss fights in the world, but they still had the setting down.

In Cataclysm? Did anyone who played it really dislike Deathwing? He was just some large, ugly dragon that we'd all seen before. I disliked Garrosh tons more than I disliked Deathwing. Hell, I was horde, and I WANTED the elementals that Deathwing made angry to rape the goblin city. I felt no desire to fight back against a face-less enemy for that loathsome race, and from there I just lost all immersion. And I think the developers must have felt the same, because Cata was full of some of the most uninspired gameplay and scenic elements I've ever seen in a Blizzard game.

It's not about how hard or easy it was. It's not about whether they add pandas. They lost the lore, and they lost the atmosphere, and that's the only thing Blizzard has ever had going for it from day one of Diablo, Starcraft, or Warcraft.

 

That's the truth of it. The immersion in a game is so critical, and perhaps due to age, or lack of motivation, but Blizzard really failed to deliver this xpac with the immersion. To be honest, I felt as if Deathwing's whole schtick was just an excuse to remake 1-60 content, and personally, I knew there was never any danger of him succeeding. That combine with the fast track available to get at least mid-level gear, none of the raids felt epic enough to put in the hassle of commiting to a guild.

Which also feels totally different now. It used to be that guilds actually meant something and their recruitment spiel actually told you about the guild, their attitude and the like. Now, there's no excuse to not be in a level 25 guild, and being in one that isn't cuts you out of so many features it isn't funny.

Don't even get me started on pvp.

 

I was never interested in PvP in WoW either. I found it boring as hell (and in most RPG games). I'm more of a loot collector than anything else.

 

Reading the history of Diablo III makes me wonder if it's going to be Blizzard's Duke Nukem: Forever.

Also, Starcraft II...mediocre. Sure, the gameplay elements are a little more refined than the original game's, but that's to be expected in a sequel.

But that's just it; the gameplay is the same - hell, even a hell of a lot worse in some areas.

Graphically? They fucked up. Badly.

They dumbed down the graphics and the aesthetics for each faction, as well as the scale. And that's not counting the cartoony textures and shaders.

I could go into a long tirade (with photographic evidence!) on how they fucked-up, but it wouldn't be productive.

Suffice to say, Blizzard is making a shit-ton of dumbfuck decisions, both in design, creativity, gameplay, and management; they've become so flushed on their own WoW success and overblown ego, that they've become amazingly arrogant.

I just hope Diablo III fails miserably, and WoW subscribers take a rapid decline; it'll be the required thing to bring them back down to Earth, deflating their heads.

 

Agree with you all the way on that post. It doesn't surprise me that they aren't getting a whole lot of new WoW subscribers. If they kept it at Lich King, everyone would probably still be happy about it. I'm not really sure if they force you to download the new expansions (And I'm willing to bet they do), but if they did, I'd say "fuck you" to that. People should be given a choice.

It's the same with Diablo 2. They basically forced you to download new patches if you wanted to play on Closed Bnet, which I didn't really like. The main reason why I play singleplayer. The last patch I liked in D2 was 1.10.

 

Watch out guys, we have an expert here.

 

They do, however, force you to download a huge-ass patch, containing fairly useless game-data.

 

I could go in a massive rant here, but I'm all out of steam and care. I've quit and returned to wow like 5 times =/ Since WotLK, everything has been streamlined, made more accessible, made more easy, more MAINSTREAM over and over. It's extremely obvious that they're just milking it for all they can while making it as accessible to as many players as possible.

Eh, it's like most long-time mmorpgs. First they cater the hardcore gaming group with their original, rpg fan-like minds, then they get bought by a big business, and turn into a money-making company with as wide player base as possible with easier and streamlined content. It's business, after all.