how about a new panda race for the upcoming expansion?

[decease.3215]

With EOD we are going to cantha, and cantha is GW version of asia, the most famous animal there is Panda..  

 

p.s. don't tell me there is no panda in GW lore, we have panda mini.   so there must be Panda!

[yoni.7015]

No thanks. If you want to play a panda then play wow. 

[Ylthan.1693]

We have them, they're called Kodans.

[decease.3215]

well.. if they came with black and white skin  XD

[Keymaster.7362]

The best you could get is a panda ranger pet.

[decease.3215]

hmm ok ill take the panda ranger pet XD

[Danikat.8537]

I don't think we'll get a new race at all, and if we did I think it would be the tengu because a lot of the ground work has already been done and I think they'd be better recieved than a brand new race previously unknown in GW2.

 

I do however hope we get panda's as ranger pets again. GW1 had them and they were fun to use, especially in PvP. Seeing someone run from a killer panda is surreal, even more so when it's called Robert Smith.

[Poormany.4507]

No, because there are no intelligent panda races in the lore, especially in the four areas we're almost certainly going to in EoD (Shing-Jea, Kaineng, Jade Sea, and Echovald). As others have said, I would like a ranger panda pet like in GW1.

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I do however hope we get panda's as ranger pets again. GW1 had them and they were fun to use, especially in PvP. Seeing someone run from a killer panda is surreal, even more so when it's called Robert Smith.

You do remember what has happened to all GW1 Pandas (except the ultra rare mini panda) perhaps? Because if you do remember them at all, you should also remember that they were almost immediately removed - they were present only in the Factions beta events, but got removed before final version released. You should also remember, why they were removed.

 

(Yes, they were reintroduced in 2012, but that was after GW1 was already in maintenance mode, and when Anet no longer had to worry about Chinese version)

Edited July 19, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

No, thank you. This isn't World of Warcraft. Thank God.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Ardenwolfe.8590

[JUN YANG.4328]

8 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I don't think we'll get a new race at all, and if we did I think it would be the tengu because a lot of the ground work has already been done and I think they'd be better recieved than a brand new race previously unknown in GW2.

 

I do however hope we get panda's as ranger pets again. GW1 had them and they were fun to use, especially in PvP. Seeing someone run from a killer panda is surreal, even more so when it's called Robert Smith.

I perfer largos than tengu. under water rare may make more sense on EOD😂

[Cyninja.2954]

Given the tons of other race options which would fit far better, without getting into the stigma of pandas in general with other MMORPGs, no thank you.

[Infusion.7149]

Use a kodan tonic.

[Danikat.8537]

8 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You do remember what has happened to all GW1 Pandas (except the ultra rare mini panda) perhaps? Because if you do remember them at all, you should also remember that they were almost immediately removed - they were present only in the Factions beta events, but got removed before final version released. You should also remember, why they were removed.

 

(Yes, they were reintroduced in 2012, but that was after GW1 was already in maintenance mode, and when Anet no longer had to worry about Chinese version)

I do remember. The original removal was based on a misunderstanding: according to Gaile Gray Anet had been told that it was illegal in China to depict the death of an endangered species, so they changed the crane pet from a red-crested crane to blue and removed the panda (except the one involved in a quest on Shing Jea of course, because she can't die). But as far as anyone has ever been able to find out no such law existed in China. The discussion on the Wiki talk page is still available if you're interested, although some of the sources aren't online any more.

 

However even if there was such a law GW2 (like GW1) has an entirely seperate version for China (due to a number of real laws which make it impractical to share 1 version) which already has numerous differences from the Western version so it would be simple to introduce pandas into the Western version and leave them out of the Chinese one.

[Astralporing.1957]

26 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I do remember. The original removal was based on a misunderstanding: according to Gaile Gray Anet had been told that it was illegal in China to depict the death of an endangered species, so they changed the crane pet from a red-crested crane to blue and removed the panda (except the one involved in a quest on Shing Jea of course, because she can't die). But as far as anyone has ever been able to find out no such law existed in China. The discussion on the Wiki talk page is still available if you're interested, although some of the sources aren't online any more.

 

However even if there was such a law GW2 (like GW1) has an entirely seperate version for China (due to a number of real laws which make it impractical to share 1 version) which already has numerous differences from the Western version so it would be simple to introduce pandas into the Western version and leave them out of the Chinese one.

Gaile never claimed that it was illegal. She claimed that they were told they can't do that while the game was going through early testing/reviews in China. Most likely they were told that if they won't adjust, the game won't be approved, or will get restrictive rating. Think of it as something similar to the Divinity's Reach Cantha District - there never were any laws against depicting of mixed heritage eastern architectures in games, but it still received enough pushback from some key people that it ended up being canned.

[Danikat.8537]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Gaile never claimed that it was illegal. She claimed that they were told they can't do that while the game was going through early testing/reviews in China. Most likely they were told that if they won't adjust, the game won't be approved, or will get restrictive rating. Think of it as something similar to the Divinity's Reach Cantha District - there never were any laws against depicting of mixed heritage eastern architectures in games, but it still received enough pushback from some key people that it ended up being canned.

I don't see why the precise wording of the misunderstanding matters. The point is it was an unncessary decision based on misinformation which was later reversed, so it would have absolutely nothing to do with their ability to put pandas into GW2.

 

(On top of which GW2's pets don't die, if they run out of health they just wander around until you swap them or use the soulbeast's merge skill.)

[Dante.1763]

7 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I don't see why the precise wording of the misunderstanding matters. The point is it was an unncessary decision based on misinformation which was later reversed, so it would have absolutely nothing to do with their ability to put pandas into GW2.

 

(On top of which GW2's pets don't die, if they run out of health they just wander around until you swap them or use the soulbeast's merge skill.)

Ehhh..

If anet was told the game wouldnt be approved due to showing pandas getting killed that would make that a necessary decision.

 

here though, there really isnt such a thing and they can always just not put it on the chinese game client.

[Quench.7091]

It would be funny if Cantha had norn who discovered a panda aspect of the wild to turn them into panda men. Not to say they should make a playable race. I just think it would be funny to see a norn panda man.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Quench.7091

[Eraden.8740]

Oh god, please no. This is one of the reasons why I left WoW. It just didn't seem to fit and the Pandarans looked hideously cute. If you want hideously cute here, go hug an Asuran.

[nosleepdemon.1368]

How about no.

[Balsa.3951]

My biggest fear is canta becomes a china bingo game 

[JUN YANG.4328]

3 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

My biggest fear is canta becomes a china bingo game 

why need to lead everything to china 😂  but china do have the longest asian history. 

[The Greyhawk.9107]

ಠ_ಠ

[Tiilimon.6094]

12 hours ago, Eraden.8740 said:

Oh god, please no. This is one of the reasons why I left WoW. It just didn't seem to fit and the Pandarans looked hideously cute. If you want hideously cute here, go hug an Asuran.

 

Pandaria was april fools joke turned into reality.

 

The Pandaren April Fools was a 2002 April Fool joke that Blizzard put up on their site, posting the pandaren as the so-called "5th race" for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. While much of this material was later adapted into lore in later sources (The Frozen Throne, Warcraft RPG, etc.), some of it differs from the later established lore.

While the introduction of the pandaren as a race for Warcraft III was purely humorous, almost a decade later the race was added to World of Warcraft's fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, as a playable race. Perhaps understandably, many players also believed this to be an elaborate prank, although for many this was more desperate hope than a simple mistake.

 

Too bad they went with pandas instead of the two headed ogre that's controlled by 2 players.

 

On April 1st, 2004, Blizzard announced an April Fool's Joke that two-headed ogres would be a playable race in WoW.[1] They claimed that the two-headed ogre would comprise of two players, one controlling each head. The ogre's name would be a combination of the two player names, the example being JonnyBob. The players would have a separate "body" channel where they could discuss things amongst themselves, but whenever each player spoke it would appear as if coming from the two-headed ogre character as a single entity. One player would control the left half of the ogre and another would control the right, meaning the players would have to cooperate to succeed in the game. Whenever one player was logged off, its head would appear asleep.

[Danikat.8537]

That sounds about right for Warcraft ogres. Whenever you gave them an order in Warcraft 2 one head would agree and the other would complain. (They always did it though, because no one wants an RTS of WvW.)

 

Personally I don't think 'WoW did it' is a reason to automatically reject an idea, but I do think anthropomorphic pandas would be an odd addition to Tyria. Especially since we've already got 1 race of bear people.

 

I suppose in theory there could be other kinds of kodan with different fur colours and patterns from other parts of the world, but Cantha seems like the least likely location. More likely they'd be in one of the currently unexplored parts of northern Tyria we know nothing about.