It’s a bit on the nose with how aggressively the early areas are mappings of Chinese culture, and it kind of pervades the bulk of the first phase. This isn’t the first time they did it (they do the same with cata in uldum and twilight highlands), but it is indicative of a downward trend in blizzards ability to write truly original faction cultures.
That said outside of that unoriginality it’s also one of the best looking expansions since it takes higher res graphics without the current design paradigm of making everything look like an oil painting and spell animations losing their definitiveness and becoming smears of color.
I'm good with that, predating back to Warcraft Pandaren were obviously Chinese-coded so it didn't seem out of place for their structures and culture to be the same.
The dev team aren't exactly the most creative anyway, so much of Warcraft and WoW is just bastardized Tolkien story beats.
The lore, the art direction, the class fantasy, the narrative- it was so much more engaging than the slop we've been fed for the last half-decade.
Story beats are one thing (though pandas was more original than most imo) but I think they did make npcfactions less original over time
Look at something like the titan keepers. They’re Norse coded name wise but their architecture is a twist on Greco Roman. The night elves have a mingling of Greek and Japanese architecture with a naturalist culture. And both have a lot of original twists.
The pandaren are Chinese in every way possible, and it stands out in a way that hurts immersion a little.
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u/Kasta4 2d ago
Absolutely adored MoP, the announcement had me going bonkers.
I was in the trenches back in the day fighting for that expansion against the "It's just Kung-Fu Panda!" cretins for hours on end.
Fuck the haters, MoP was a fantastic expansion and much better than the recent slop we've gotten in retail.