With a cute little “Welcome back to Pandaria” short tweet intending to lure WoW users, the World Wide Web basically went crazy. That tweet alongside what has to be the Mists of Pandaria expansion concept art has generated enormous speculation-pitched arguments and potent nostalgia worthy of fueling a thousand Pandaren breweries.
Back in 2012, Mists of Pandaria was the expansion that introduced the Pandaren race and the Asian-influenced continent of Pandaria to WoW players who simply considered those days as the empty spots in the school map-the golden era of WoW. It was… a word that must have stirred the pot: controversial. Some loved the beautiful setup and great story; others simply hated the whole powdered-wig-standing-on-a-podium-kung-fu-panda aesthetic-and judging from the instant reaction to the tweet, those feelings remain divided to this day.
“Meh. It was annoying the first time. Pass.” Nathan Dickson succinctly summarized. “Literally so happy to be here, it feels like it’s healing my soul,” stated Logan (LHP64D); talk about the two extremes! Comments are laden with this kind of energy-all the way from it being their favorite expansion to “I almost quit WoW for that ‘almost 20 years ago’ (guess their math skills are quite embarrassing).”
So, exactly what do we even think that tweet means? Some feel like Blizzard is miffing the fans during the current WoW Classic Cataclysm phase. The other half, with their ever-growing Cassandra-like belief, fear an advance announcement for Mists of Pandaria Classic. And of course, we cannot discount all the nut-hat ideas-out there; would there be a Pandaria-themed WoW 2? (OakSunder even straight up asked, “WoW 2 when?” because, why not dream?).
“This kind of comment” by Mikus64 is spicy: “Isn’t this the expansion that everyone hated because you chose pandas over cool lizard/dragon people?” Oof. This one’s gonna leave a mark. Though, in fairness, a fair few replies alike went off in defense of Pandaria: “one of the best expansions!!” (shoutout to Linanry with this energy).
The business model police even arrived, with Maxtreeplay asking if this meant “$5 per month for subscription???” while Miguelini demanded to know “When in gamepass?” Because nothing says “immersive fantasy world” like arguing about subscription fees.
Content creators already see the opportunities being generated by this buzz. Moonyeezy announced they’ll be going live leveling Pandaria for “epic adventures” and chicken dinners. Because what else would you pair with Azeroth, chicken dinners?
While all this crazy turmoil exists, a huge group is just happy to start going through WoW’s supposed golden days again. “Time to relive the misty magic,” tweeted RePete, followed by a panda-and-fog emoji combo that somehow perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere of the expansion. Meanwhile, Kulia turned up the feels after saying she “almost cried” her way back to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms – same.
Ironically, not many seconds later, the usual “dead game” comments started trickling in; “No way game is this dead barely any interactions in this post” said Mokrill, an incitement to argue the opposite. Classic.
and that… would be all the unexpected response if that got OpenPleb: “Turtle WoW better.” Because cherry on the icing to be a very online statement is to promote a private server in an official Blizzard thread.
With no idea on what’s up, your guess is as good as anyone’s. Maybe just another nostalgia trip for Cataclysm Classic. Maybe Pandaria Classic is coming sooner than everyone thought. Maybe the whole shebang is an elaborate set-up for that animated series Cameron McEwen wanted. Whatever it might be, twelve years down the line, even mention of Pandaria opens a serious topic in the WoW community. Actually, that in itself is the most classic thing Blizzard can really do.
