Many people think that Pandaria in World of Warcraft is cute and cuddly. But that’s not true – the quests are sometimes really cruel.
I’ve leveled dozens of times in Pandaria. The first time I was careful, but with later twinks I switched on mental autopilot, skimmed quests and skipped cutscenes. I just wanted to level up quickly.
But now, with WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria, I took the time to enjoy all the quests again with full attention and to play through the story completely again after almost 12 years.
It occurred to me that Mists of Pandaria had some of the darkest and most evil stories ever in World of Warcraft.
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I remembered that Pandaria wasn’t as cute and squeamish as some people like to say. Many people think that Pandaria was the “Kung Fu Panda” expansion, which featured the inappropriately cute Pandaren, who don’t really fit in with Warcraft – even though they were in Warcraft 3.
The massacre of drowning orcs
One of the worst scenes in the expansion takes place relatively early on. The Alliance launches an air attack on a Horde base. That’s not too bad. Later on, you sink enemy ships and then clear the ground troops out of the way.
But in a small sequence, a pretty cruel act comes to light – which in the real world would be a pretty serious war crime.
Orcs try to escape from the sunken ships and swim towards land. They are about to drown and have obviously surrendered.
For Alliance Admiral Rogers, however, this is no reason to show the orcs any mercy. The orcs are shot by gunfire while swimming and the sea turns red with their blood.
I had to take a deep breath – that was unexpectedly cruel and in recent years I had somehow repressed the fact that the campaign on Pandaria begins with such an atrocity.
Of course, you have to give credit to the Alliance leaders for the fact that their decisions were probably not made with full awareness. Because in the next moment we are confronted with the real enemy in Pandaria, the Sha. They attack the inhabitants and amplify their emotions – such as fear or hatred. This quickly turns empathetic, compassionate beings into angry killers.
Still, mowing down surrendering enemies who are swimming for their lives to avoid drowning is an extremely dark act that gives a good taste of how dark the quests in Pandaria are.
Locals are manipulated and turned into weapons
But the Jade Forest remains pretty dark. If you look at what the Horde and Alliance are doing, it’s actually extremely reprehensible. While the Horde is consuming the ape-like Hozen, the Alliance is helping the Jinyu. In both cases, the locals are then used as “cannon fodder” to be set against each other in a big battle.
When you break the whole thing down to “we come to a foreign country, force the locals into our conflict and immediately use them on the front lines of our war”, it suddenly takes on a very dark touch.
So if you’re not in a hurry, take your time with the quests. Both the texts are interesting, as are the dialogues of the NPCs, which they often have while fast players are already sprinting off. The missions involving the Klaxxi are particularly interesting and could play a bigger role in The War Within. I had especially forgotten about the revelation at the very end of the campaign. The purge that Jaina carries out in Dalaran also has a very bad aftertaste and was one of our 5 most gruesome WoW quests of all time.
How do you experience the story of Pandaria? Is this your first time there?