Blizzard announces new WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandaria

Been playing since late BC and I honestly did see the Pandarans coming in but I didn't think they would come into the picture until AFTER Emerald Dream since people seemed keen on that. I personally am quite fond of them, just because I like the thought of a cute fluffy panda kicking your ass. And because it's fluffy. But as far as Cataclysm raiding goes...

To Nissa - I wish I was on your server then. I was on a backwater server and I was co leading a guild at the time when Cataclysm came out. We were doing really fine until Firelands came out and after that it killed all of the small raiding guilds on our server, including mine. The big time guilds took the raiding spotlight and it really seemed like the vanilla raiding system after that. Small raiding guilds didn't have a chance anymore unless you had an extremely tight knit group. But that's just my experience on my server.
 
The issue was I was happy with Cataclysm. I just started hating the fact I never got to do any Raids because our raid leaders always played favorites. I hated doing dailies because I never needed money. I didn't bother with random dungeons because I didn't need the gear. I liked the story of Cataclysm, but I never got to experience any of it because I couldn't go to the raids. So yes, I was happy with Cataclysm. Its just that I can't take Mists of Pandaria seriously enough as it is. Even more so considering Blizzard already hand waved it as a tad ridiculous before the full reveal.

I know a bit about how you feel. I ended up getting bored and taking a break.

As far as the Pandarians are concerned though, they're more than just cute little fluffy panda bears. It's really not a ridiculous concept, if you actually read the lore involved. Blizzard has written things off as ridiculous in the past, but it didn't change those features coming out.

I still remember when the Pandarian pet landed on the Blizzard store, and everyone wanted to know if that meant Pandarians would be in the next expansion (which turned out to be Cataclysm). Now that Pandarians are indeed coming, it seems a lot of people in the community have done an about-face and instantly hate the idea for no good reason. So what if Blizzard made a few April Fools jokes about it in the past?

One of the things I love about the concept so far is the fact you'll get to choose your own faction after you finish the starter zone. I know a couple other games do something similar (City of Heroes, with the Praetorians, for example), but it's still a really cool feature for this race. Best of all, the lore is there in support of it.

Just give it a chance. Read up on Pandarians, if you haven't already. You won't be disappointed.

A pet peeve of mine is people who say "this is going to suck" when something new is announced. I mean, really, all we've seen is a cinematic trailer and a gameplay video from MMO-Champion. If you can determine how something will be without even seeing much of it, I seriously envy you. ;)