Hello everyone, I am a fairly new player (started in legion) and I am a big fan of everything Pandaria; I love the themes, aesthetics and races.
I almost exclusively play pandarens (and Horde) and I like almost everything about them.
The problem however is the absolute disregard blizzard seems to have about them, more specifically about the Huojin and Tushui (horde and alliance pandarens).
Being the only playable race that can join both factions and the only one with a neutral starting zone they offer something TRULY unique: the ability to choose your faction based on themes and ideals, not only the race you want to play, and the only race with personal relationships with members of the opposite factions.
This incredible storytelling potential however is (almost) never used, with blizzard preferring to focus on neutral pandaren characters like Cho, Chen and Lily, Taran Zhu, etc.
This led to an astonishing underdevelopment of both the horde and alliance subfactions: not only they didnât have any screentime after some brief nods in mop, but they are the ONLY race without any named characters outside their faction leaders* ( even the newly added allied races have larger casts of named NPCs).
Aysa and Ji (*and Nomi apparently) are legitimately the single representatives of the playable pandaren, and one would think that them being lovers could be an extremely fascinating opportunity for storytelling, especially in the faction war expansion.
And yet they where the least involved racial leaders of ALL the playable races, with their only role being (helping at) healing Blaine and guarding a now empty embassy.
Blizzard seems to have completely missed that there are people playing pandarens that also like to feel part of their factions, and not just being used as a punch line ( poor Ji was even left out of the celebratory feast at the end of legion for crying out loud!)
Shadowlands will probably continue this legacy negligence, but I hope this rant may help to sensitise the community to the pain of us forgotten pandarens :â).
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Iâm not trying to troll but i also keep forgetting about them. xD
You do however make a good point, you never really see them at all, doesnât seem like their involved in anything.
I actually hope this topic gets noticed.
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youâre talking to a company that canonized warlock metamorphosis and made an entire very memorable questline revolving around it just to have it completely erased from the class an expansion later
but keep the quest in the game at the same time and give metamorphosis to your legion follower because theyâre disgusting 
doubt they give a sh#*! about the story honestly much less pandaren 
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At this point even if they deleted pandas nobody would care.
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Thatâs what happens when an April fools joke becomes a playable race.
We gnomes didnât have a good representative either for a long long time.
Someday you might get a bigger pandaren character, all you can hope for really
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Have the neutral characters commit to a faction. If theyâre not going to develop other chars, commit those they have. The fact they may end up fighting each other is just potential development in waiting, or an opportunity to cool down on the endless âmuh faction warâ.
Chen assisted Rexxar way back when, him going back to the Horde with Lili wouldnât be completely untoward now that undead dictator is gone.
Alliance is trickier. Iâf say Taran Zhu given heâs very focussed on strong discipline and ideology, however his heart lies with Pandaria and Pandaria only. Maybe Cho could take up with alliance in order to learn about all of their extensive cultural history given his interest in the titans in the SoO raid - Dwarves presents an opportunity for him to investigate further.
Itâs that or just make some new Pandaren characters. I do like Pandaren, theyâre not a joke race but itâs hard to see that given blizz does nothing with the potentially interestion notion of having a race defined by their choices (choosing faction) rather than their biology (youâre an orc so youâre in the horde lol)
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The problem is that the neutral race thing was a mistake in the first place. Horde should have gotten Mogus instead. Now no wonder they have dumped the whole lore
Most races get this treatment though. Gnomes didnât get much at all for a very long time until recently. The game just keeps on going back to the same old characters over and over again. And here I thought we get something different in Warlords with VolâJin but look how that turned out.
I know they admitted they shouldâve done more with Ji and Aysa back in Mists and of sorts they are about in the Horde story briefly helping the Tauren out during that pre-rebellion against Sylvanas campaign.
I like to see Ji Firepaw and Hiro get together to sort a few things out to improve the Horde at lease, that could be very interesting. Maybe make it a three person group if we can get a goblin leader in that isnât Gallywix.
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well your basically discount pandas from some island why would they focus on you when they got mainlanders
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Itâs too much hard work for Blizzard to include a Pandaren. Minimum effort is their preferred stance. So the Pandaren leaders just get plopped on the boats in the harbour and left there. 
Your racial leader was one of the bosses in a bfa raid.
There are gnome AIs in island expeditions.
Your racial leader is seen in cutscenes in bfa.
You just canât post on topic whitout mentioning meta can you ?
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Pandas are literally an april foolâs joke that was taken too far. They were made to cater to the asian playerbase.
At the moment that playerbase is more or less doing fine, while the American and European is leaving en mass.
I am not even talking about large roles; gnomes, goblins, dwarfs and trolls still had some secondary throwaway characters in some random quest here and there, but pandarens legitimately have nothing: not a simple grunt, comic relief buffoon, grumpy commander or imprisoned sailor.
They legitimately added Nomi to the horde just to have ONE pandaren in the vulpera unlocking scenario.
This is completely unheard-of before or since and it is sad.
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And? They can still develop them. Blood elves are an april fools joke to me (yes i know im a velf XD) yet here you are. Tbh its not that hard to make them interesting just create a couple of new characters for both factions and have them do something. We really didnt need more human characters on the Alliance and the Horde really needs more characters at this point.
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Two things:
- The current patch literally takes place in Pandaria
- Pandaren are extremely averse to conflict and are seldom seen in the wider world. Just because the mists have cleared does not mean this has changed.
Pandaren will never take an extremely active role in the Warcraft story as anything other than victims of the bullets flying all around them. There will be the occational Pandaren, sure, but thatâs about it.
This is in line with what Pandaren are about, and I have no problems with it.
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I recall some panda corpses in the Alliance scene in Nazjatar when you spy on Azshara having a chat about the tidestone.
Welcome to WoW where neither the factions or the world truly matter and we just tag along the current favourite pet for the writers.
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