Recently Blizzard released the Mists of Pandaria trailer at Gamescon. There has been a mixed reaction, to the pirate fight meets kung fu master who teaches both those scallywags a lesson. However one cannot argue that the trailer is filled with testosterone pumping action from start to finish. A few tongue in cheek moments bring a little levity to it but all in all when Blizzard says this expansion will be about the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance, and Pandaria is caught in the middle, I think they conveyed thatin this trailer.
So let me get out the way first the gripes I am hearing and seeing in the community and on twitter.
- There was no women in the trailer, Blizzard went out of their way to do this
- Blizzard has stated with this trailer, they don’t care about the expansion
- They didn’t demonstrate the true conflict of the Horde and Alliance and show the impact to Pandaria
Those 3 are summations of the major gripes. Let me try to address each.
Correct there are no women in the trailer. Did Blizzard go out of their way to not put any women in the trailer, maybe but not because they are against women, far from it. I have seen another blog post that brought up the same thing I discussed with some guildies last night that the characters for Horde and Alliance look like 
those found on Warcraft Tides of Darkness. Those two characters on the box look awfully familiar looking at the MoP trailer. Could it be that Blizzard was trying to associate the battle between Horde and Alliance in this expansion with some nostalgia from the past, as in their old RTS title? I think that is more plausible than, Blizzard hates women and is singling them out argument.
Now granted I was disappointed, they didn’t show a female Pandaren, as I think Blizz has outdone themselves with those models. Also seeing as how Jaina plays such an integral role in the storyline for this expansion not including her in the opening cinematic in some way seems wrong to me. However at the same time I do understand what I personally believe Blizzard was trying to do.
For the second item, Blizzard not caring about the expansion with the trailer. Granted I will agree I felt as though they could have done more with the trailer to convey the overarching conflict, the impact, show some key players, Jaina & Garrosh for example, I don’t think Blizzard would throw their hands up and say just put anything out who cares. Blizzard has never been that type of company. Sure some folks won’t agree with all the moves they have made, and while they have had missteps with games recently, I don’t think they say forget it, we don’t care just put out some garbage. I personally don’t think the trailer was garbage, I was just hoping for more.
Now the 3rd item, that Blizzard didn’t show enough about the Horde and Alliance conflict and its impact on Pandaria, I agree with this. I think they could have shown the two warriors fighting then have the Sha manifest during the fight. Though they kept it focused on the two of them fighting and introducing the Pandaren monk to the mix to restore balance.
In the end here are my thoughts on the Mists of Pandaria trailer. As I have mentioned before, I do not like how they did not include female Pandaren, the Sha, Garrosh or Jaina. I felt that all were integral parts of the story that were left out of the trailer. I enjoyed the action and the opening sequence was great with the ships seeming to be destroyed in rough seas. The jungle atmosphere and the battle that ensued along the ruins by the Horde and Alliance were great. Showing off some of the Monks moves and special abilities helped to highlight the new class and race. The struggle between the Horde and Alliance was nostalgic of the box art for Warcraft 2, for those old enough to have played it. The Horde and Alliance trying to work together, well I am a bit done with that, I want to see the fight rage on, no matter what, between the factions. In the end the trailer did just what a trailer should do though, give a snippet of what the game will be about, but making you want more. I am sure my personal views on this are different than others so I would love to hear your thoughts on the trailer.
I guess one can expect criticism on practically anything…but, its a trailer. Its just a trailer! Its like watching a trailer for any film and instantaneously lauding it as the best picture of the year or lambasting it as the worst Razzie film ever. Or test driving a car and declaring it within that 15 min the worst or best car in the world.
I know, I’m going to extremes here…but that’s what some of the critics in the community have in short done. Because the 3 characters are all male, then Blizz hates women?! That’s so absurd I cannot even fathom the irrational mind-numbingly idiotic mentality that comes up with that conclusion!
I’m with you Cera on I would like to have seen A or B. Hey wouldn’t this have been nice if it was in there? But simply put, the trailer is a trailer. a snippet. Doesn’t make want to play the game any more or less than if I had never seen the trailer at all.
quori´s last [type] ..Check-in
Honestly, my thoughts have been…. OMG the human’s deformed!!! I loved the atmosphere of the trailer, but the ridiculous over-muscling of the human male model looked so ridiculous that it completely overshadowed the mood they were trying to create. I know that’s the basic human male build in game, but the gorgeous graphics of the cinematic just made it look so much worse. I mean Mr Universe doesn’t have that many muscles, so why does a normal human sailor? Men are not naturally triangle-shaped, darn it! It kinda reminded me why the only male race I’m even willing to roll are male belves, because they look slightly less deformed. But then again, I’m a woman, I’m not really the demographic these now very old models are aimed at.
I would have loved to see the female panda instead of the male fighting the two though. I understand why it might not have occurred to Blizz, or even if it did why they didn’t do it (can’t risk alienating that all-important males 15-25 demographic), but it would have been really great.
I did like the atmosphere, and I liked the lack of enemies (weird as that sounds). There was an article on wow insider a little while back talking about how we (Horde and Alliance) are the real villains of Mists, and I feel the cinematic really fed into that.
And as an aside, I will have a blog post up later today with comparisons of all the cinematics from an unbiased observer who knows nothing about World of Warcraft or Blizzard and does not play mmos or computer games at all. I thought it’d be an interesting way to look at them all.
PS- wandered over from a twitter retweet by someone I follow. Looks like a cool blog, I’ll have to add you to my reader/twitter/bookmarks.
Melfina the Blue´s last [type] ..Cataclysm Post-Mortem part 1 (the screencap version)
Thanks for reading! Yeah the environments were nice, I agree with the over the top models, problem is those have been the way they want to portray their human characters, so to each their own. My issue I think is shared with you, that Horde and Alliance are the villains, the last raid boss is going to be Garrosh, yet he isn’t shown in the trailer, and he is partially the last boss because of the crap he pulled at Theramore and pissing off Jaina, and she isn’t in the trailer either. If both of them were in the trailer I think I would have had a much different feeling about the trailer.
But thanks again for reading I will add you to my reader as well, always looking for new bloggers to follow.
After rewatching all the cinematics, the Mists one reminds me of the vanilla one really strongly. I love that cinematic for making the player characters feel EPIC, so that may be what they were going for. It does feel very out of place next to the later ones without that BIG BAD though, so I can totally see why you’d want it. Honestly I think the BC one is the best in terms of compromising between epic PCs and big bad. You get Illy, he’s obviously bad, and you also get a bunch of scenes of PCs being cool.
Also, not new. Just really bad at publicity. I should work on that, since my next post will be the big 325!
Melfina the Blue´s last [type] ..The WoW cinematics review through the eyes of a non-gamer