Yes yes, I know I’m late to the party but dammit I’ve got an opinion and I’m going to share it. I need to get over this whole ‘everyone else has already written about it/had the discussion’ thing or I’ll never write anything. So there has been a whole bunch of news released, but since I am not a news blog but an opinion blog I’m going to focus on two points that have been rumbling around my head while I’ve been ill over the past 2 days.

The female Pandaren is Pear-Shaped.

Originally posted by Cradix @ MMO Champion

This is a great comparison here. She still has a waist, but the waist-hip-boob ratio is significantly different in this case. The Pandaren woman has siginficantly chunkier thighs and lower legs, and a much rounder and more bottom heavy torso. While yes, she is not as wonderfully rotund as the male character, I think this character model is a great addition to the range of body shapes available to players. She is what we would call pear-shaped, although an apple shape would have been much better, I think it’s a good start for an MMO character model.

Small steps.

Scholomance and Scarlet Monestary – Frozen in Time

So, I looked at the videos for these instances and I feel like I’m missing something. I was really excited by the prospect of these dungeons getting the Deadmines Treatment, but I am feeling distinctly underwhelmed about it at the moment. The new Troll heroics, Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep have, to a certain extent, sort of moved the stories of the instances further along. Not so much in the case of Shadowfang Keep, but the epic tale of Vanessa Vancleef was one of the highlights of Cataclysm for me. I adored the new Westfall and the build up to the reveal of Vanessa. I do feel it could have done with a little more complexity and depth, but it was a very enjoyable visit to the tensions between the Defias and the Stormwind Monarchy.

The Troll heroics were, I guess, more about player nostalgia than revisiting the story and I do think that was a shame. However Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance were some of my favourite instances when I first started playing. The challenge of healing Scholomance as a fresh 60 holy priest was something I absolutely relished in the pre-Naxx1 days. I’m not sure whether simply updating the existing stuff is enough. I’ve already killed Sally Whitemane once – should I really have to kill this iconic lore character again?

It’s hard to judge before we’ve actually seen these ‘refreshed’ instances. I’m still excited by the potential nostalgia trip, but I kind of want to see what happens NEXT with regards to the Scarlets. I can forgive troll voodoo hanging around like a bad smell long after it’s been vanquished (voodoo always has a way of coming back) but after the epic stories of Lillian Voss, and the Scarlet stories in Northrend I’m not really certain that Scarlet Monastery will be as satisfying to simply ‘revisit’. I would hope that Blizzard have found some ways to tie the story into the new storylines around their zones. Somehow.