I love this cinematic. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost in my mind, anyway, is that for the first time since the trailer for
The Burning Crusade, we've got ourselves a trailer with a little bit of humor in it. Don't get me wrong, I loved the cinematics for both
Wrath and
Cataclysm, but there is only so much dark doom and gloom I can take. We've dealt with the worst of what the world has had to offer in the past two expansions, and frankly, I could use a breather from it all.
Warcraft has always been a franchise that's had a quirky sense of humor at its heart, and we haven't seen that humor in recent trailers. Given the themes of the prior two expansions, that was understandable -- how can you make light of the Lich King? How can you make a joke about Deathwing literally ripping the world apart? These were dire times, and they required a suitably dire cinematic to get the urgency of that point across.
Mists of Pandaria is an entirely different sort of expansion, and the cinematic reflects that. But there's far more to this cinematic than meets the eye -- and it's the deeper meanings that continue to delight me.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria