The Queue: Pandapocalypse

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

On Friday I responded to a question regarding Pandaren, and it turns out I'm about half wrong. Partially right, but also partially wrong, which is certainly a problem. My answer was based off of something I talked about with a random Blizzard employee, but in hindsight that's a pretty poor move on my part, they wouldn't necessarily know the little inner workings of one or two departments within the company. What I said was refuted with quotes from J. Allen Brack and Chris Metzen, which I'm willing to put more weight in as far as game lore goes. The Chinese did, indeed, have a problem with the Pandaren being in-game.

I was right in that there are no laws against virtual pandas getting shivved or whatever, but there definitely was an issue with the Pandaren race, culturally. It's much more likely it just ran into a lot of friction when it came down to dealing with censors and the cultural shift, and it became not worth it to risk losing players over. I'm sure the fact that the Pandarens' original design was much more Japanese (see above) than Chinese didn't help, but that was shifted in the right direction eventually and may not have had an actual impact at all. And with that said...

Cadychan asked...

I don't know if this is more of a lore question, but here goes: The dragons. Yes, the dragons. How did the race itself come to be? Were the five dragon Aspects already part of an existing dragon race, and the Titans were like "BAM! Here's some powers, 'cause I like the way you five do things around here," or more of a 'the Titans created the dragons as avatars and bestowed them with specific powers and tasks'?

I think it's a little from column A, a little from column B. I suspect the Proto-Drakes ar what the Dragons were like before Titan involvement, but I'm not sure if there's anything that specifically says that. Just that there's some relation. All of the Aspects were made from Galakrond's offspring, so the race was already there in some capacity. It's probably safe to assume they (as a race) were there before the Titans, and the Titans just made them awesome.

eddiebinde531 asked...

I have questions on 25 man Naxx, why did Blizzard constantly say you should bring the player not the class this expansion yet made Instructor Razuvious and Grand Widow Faerlina in heroic need priests to MC their adds?

In response to me wondering this during the 10 man version, a guildie said Blizz might be giving another class the ability to MC as well. I seriously doubt it but want to know what WI thinks about this rumor.

I don't think they'll be doing that. 'Bring the player not the class' is tossed around all the time, but only goes so far. Encounters couldn't have any diversity at all if you had to avoid including a special class ability. It's safe to assume that you have a Priest of some sort in your 25-man raid. Holy, Discipline, Shadow, whatever. Razuvious can be done with one Priest, it just takes some high quality play on the part of everyone else. It'd be a problem if you needed 3+ Priests, like Felmyst.

A much easier alternative would be to just keep those crystals in Heroic mode for Razuvious, if something had to be done at all. Giving out Mind Control to another class entirely is sort of silly.

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