My gut feeling, judging by the people who are freaking out over this, is that the kind of humorless killjoy that would quit over pandas is the sort that makes the rest of us miserable in LFD and trade chat. So I'm not sure that would hurt the game too much.

I agree with Kylenne. Those who need their MMO of choice to be super-serious can go play elsewhere. Those who play an MMO to, you know, have fun and kick ass will be happy with WoW.

There will be subs lost for sure. I think with Pandas though, they are going to go well over 12 million. Just viewing the trailer, it doesn't feel like WoW, but it looks really awesome. This will probably bring people into WoW who never played this type of game before. It's going to have a draw just on Pandaren alone. I was excited when they announced worgen and goblin. I can't even put to words, my level of excitement, well over 11.

I'm not a fan of Pandas. Not a fan of Asian imagery. I despise anime. I don't troll LFG or Trade.

This expansion will have very little to offer me it seems. I don't know if I'll quit fully or not but I doubt I'll rush out to grab this one on release day. I've been playing since Vanilla beta.

Seems like a good time for me to check out some other MMO's.

I just put in my cancellation. Yeah I know it's nitpicking to call rice-paddy hat wearing kung-fu pandas 'too silly' when we already have space goats, goblins, walking cows, and balloons for pets, but for me it was the cumulative effect of 'all that silly' which already exists - and then adding stereotypical kung-fu pandas into that stew - that pushed it over the line for me.

Throughout the entirety of our current expansion countless people have been complaining about "rehashed content." Now we finally get a glimpse of truly original game play and people still find reasons to criticize. I, for one, simply cannot wait for MoP and welcome our Panda overlords!
Seriously though, I think this race will most likely be a noble race, I don't see them being a comedic race (you can't be a funny monk). We've already had 2 comedic races (goblins and gnomes), Blizz is probably gonna borrow from Ancient Eastern cultures as guidelines for how this race will behave.