Lets talk about the World of Warcraft. NO NO LOOK FUCK stick around, assholes.
I'm sure it will be rewarding.
They called me back, you know. Desperate for people to play again, they gave out some pretty fly rewards. A free few days, a free upgrade up till the last xpac available, and a free boost to 80 and transfer for a single character. That's a fairly phenomenal amount of free shit, all because they know there's a significant issue with this latest expansion:
The Mists of Pandaria. Exciting! Except.
What the fuck is Pandaria. Show me on the map where Pandaria has been this whole time. Whatever.
To be fair, the Pandaren race has existed before this point. To use WoWWiki's respectable prose, they've long been "a race regarded by fans - and used by Blizzard - as a 'joke race' but still with legitimacy within the lore."
See, the concept of the Pandarens can be traced back to one single dude at Blizzard - Sam 'Samwise' Didier, the current art director - who just liked drawing pandas so much that he put pictures of them in-game in little easter eggs going back all the way to 199-fucking-4 when Warcraft: Orcs and Humans came out.
I'm going to shed light on a dirty secret that we sort of gloss over now that we're firmly indoctrinated into the day-glo world of WoW, with all its fucking...worgen and gnomes and Thrall not being Warchief anymore and deciding to go hug
See, it turns out in 1994 most of the art concept was done by two guys - Chris Metzen and Sam Didier, who both look exactly like you expect people who draw the following pictures to look like. There are beards. Didier draws deathmetal album covers. Metzen very obviously slams the Dew.
Back then, it was these two hairy dudes on the cusp of the RTS revolution drawing generic fantasy art in ballpoint pen like it belonged on their fucking Social Studies notebook.
The 'plot' for the first two Warcraft games was pretty sketchy compared to the elaborate, swollen lorebags of today that we accept as the new standard.
Basically, there was this sweet world all fantasy and shit with knights and clerics and dwarves, called Azeroth, and then some dark portals opened up and Orcs and Ogres came pouring out and they fought.
And so Blizzard found some dudes who drew some sweet orcs, and hired them.
Look.
Look at Chris Metzen's Nerzhul.
Tell me that isn't the sweetest fucking orc warchief you've ever seen. 
He is literally sitting on skulls and scrolls. He's got a WWF belt with the Horde symbol on it. The rest of his outfit is apparently entirely composed of that 90's trademark of this style of art, pouches.
And then Sam Didier was like "bro thats rad as fuck check out my orc blademaster because it's goddamn 1999 and samurais are cool and shit but also orcs?"
(Honestly, Zul'jin being a wiry axe hurling deathmonster in WCII contributed significantly to my initial affinity to the trolls as like, my generic race in WoW. Look at this shit and tell me that, if you were in 5th grade, you wouldn't later make your first character a troll hunter)
And Warcraft 3 had a little joke of a panda included, because they could afford to dick around at this point.
And in Vanilla WoW we could visit the area where he was encountered, him and whatshisname (Rexxar, ugh), and you could see his keg leftover and it gave you a moment of "aww yeeeaaah, treading in the footsteps of the previous generation of giants, how integrating and neat" that really made WoW so goddamn good in the beginning.
AND THEN WE DIDN'T HEAR FUCKING SHIT ABOUT PANDAS FOR EIGHT YEARS UNTIL NOW.
That's right. Pandas - sorry, Pandarens - are a fucking joke. They've always been a joke, they've never been srs, and now they're a playable race and the entire future of WoW for the next 1.5-2 years is going to be Panda focused.
WHY?
Because there's nothing left.
Oh, we learned so fucking much about the intricate lore of Azeroth and Kalimdor. We've killed Ragnaros. We've killed the Qiraji. We killed Ragnaros AGAIN. We've killed so many guys who were just made the fuck up within WoW.
And we had to kill them, because we had already killed all of the people from the entire Warcraft universe up to that point.
Illidan is dead. The Lich King is dead.
Kil'jaeden is dead. Hell, we went back in time and made sure Archimonde died too.
Malygos is dead.
DEATHWING IS DEAD.
Literally the only threat remaining against the world of Azeroth is the Titan Sargeras himself.
(Get me drunk sometime and ask me about the Aesir and Vanir titans.)
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO IN PANDARIA AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?
The problem, of course, is that I do care. For the same reason that I will play every single Pokemon game, until I'm in a retirement home, demented and calling people to brag about my Rattata.
It's in the top percentage of Rattata, you see.
I'm legitimately curious, nay, fascinated by the new mechanics being introduced.
A new class? The last time that happened was years ago!
It's the promise, the illusion of fun and progress, starting the cycle up again.
Whatever I end up doing, the only guarantee is that I'm going to continually shout about it until you're all sick.
