Evonisia said:
Ugh, I got bored of Kung Fu Panda jokes about Mists of Pandaria, oh wait I never found them funny. Granted if anybody has actually played the thing they'd realise that the Pandaren are much more than that and it has a rather grim tone, albeit poorly written.
I think people who hear this joke and immediately jump to the defense of "Pandaren were in WoW before Kung Fu Panda, so stop making this joke! ;_;" are missing the entire point of the joke in the first place.
Yes, Pandaren existed in the WoW universe before Kung Fu Panda. And the concepts of anime school girls with psychic powers, bear cavalry, and trained attack dolphins all existed before C&C Red Alert came along, but I don't recall anyone getting too terribly defense about how stupid all of those things are.
The Pandaren expansion exists as a means to capitalize on the rise of anthropomorphic animals in popular media, especially in the Chinese market where players eat that shit up. Their nature as masters of martial arts is probably coincidental, fair enough, but they wouldn't have been added to WoW at all if such creatures weren't becoming more and more popular. A lot more recent MMOs released tend to feature at least one furry character race to play as for pretty much the same reason.
In other words: Just because your game is older doesn't mean it's not trying to capitalize on more recent trends. And since it's such a bizarre shift from what people are used to hearing about when they hear about WoW (they're used to hearing D&D-esque terms in reference to WoW, i.e. liches and dragons and such), they're naturally going to crack jokes about it. You need to stop getting defense, and focus on getting a sense of humor instead. 'cuz honestly, Kung Fu Panda jokes are pretty tame. You could do a lot worse, and in fact, many other MMOs do. Learn to roll with it.