Rabbits and pandas

I managed to create a Guild Wars 2 character this morning before having to go to work. It is a rabbit. Or rather a humanoid which looks like a rabbit, and is called an Asura. Wielding pistols, as I chose engineer as his "profession" aka class. Next month I will create a panda monk in WoW, like everybody else. I already play a humanoid cow in that game. None of these are the weirdest race I've ever played, because that distinction probably has to go to the three hamsters I played in Allods Online: They play like one character, but are shown as a group of three, for example with two of them on top of each other holding a bow, while the third one pulls the arrow.

Everquest has lizard-men and rat-men. And there are lots of games in which some of the other races aren't completely serious either, for example the gnomes and goblins in World of Warcraft, even if they aren't fluffy animals in human form. I have a female warlock in WoW with pink pigtails, summoning sinister demons. I wanted to call her Dottie, but the name was already taken. And once you visit Asian games, you will see a lot more silly races.

There is a huge amount of silliness going on in nearly every MMORPG, in quest descriptions, the way how certain races look, dance moves and other emoticons, and in lot of other places. I really don't understand the people who chose to ignore all of that silliness in the history of MMORPGs and pretend that the Pandaren are the first time a game introduced silliness, somehow spoiling their game and turning it from something dead serious into something childish. It isn't as if Blizzard had lots of other options to introduce new races into the game that aren't silly. Next expansion will probably be murlocs.