Everyone loves a good April Fool's joke--especially in the geek world. Google's had some prime cuts in the springtime tomfoolery department, and ThinkGeek's yearly pseudo-products rarely fail to amuse. Heck, TG even introduces some of their gag gifts as real purchasables every year, and to good sales, too. When you're a digital novelty retailer it helps to reward your customer's sense of levity. That doesn't mean that every company should turn their pranks into real life. Blizzard, oh, Blizzard--what on earth are you doing? 

So, yes, the new World of Warcraft expansion pack will be called "The Mists of Pandaria", and it will introduce a new continent inhabited entirely by an anthropomorphic panda race. Blizzard will make perhaps its first trespass into awkward racial politics by modeling the continent's aesthetic after ancient China and its citizens after what we presume white people think ancient Chinese monks looked like. There's a new monk class too, in case the real-world analogy wasn't blunt enough for you. 

It's awkward and it looks silly--a panda race? Really??--but the latest expansion actually may throw some interesting new features into the mix. For starters, the Pandaren will be the first neutral race, unaffiliated with either the Alliance or the Horde. Those who play as Pandaren can later choose to align their character once they reach level 10. The level cap of the game has now been increased to 90 as well, and in addition to the playable pandas, a new batch of enemy races and bosses will pop up. The story looks halfway decent. It's just the aesthetic that's awkward. 

Maybe I'm being hypersensitive, but I feel like it's a misstep for Blizzard to base a WoW race on an actual ethnicity. I could buy the cartoon Tolkien atmosphere of the rest of the game, even though paid-subscription MMORPGs aren't really my speed. It's a fun game and it looks good. It was entirely apolitical, grounded in a vaguely Western fantasy mythology. But introducing cartoon China as a continent? Inhabited by giant panda-men? Eh. Weird. Not fun.

And not really true to the brand, either. Azeroth might be Middle Earth in technicolor, but it carried a certain weight to its aesthetic. Even the goofier-looking races like dwarves and trolls could be taken somewhat seriously in context. But I feel like all anyone's going to be thinking about while playing a Pandaren is a certain DreamWorks movie starring Jack Black. It's too kiddy, too Cartoon Network, too Neopets to work. It feels like an April Fool's Day joke. As it should have stayed. 

Anyway, you can judge for yourself--watch the Mists of Pandaria trailer below.