From what I understand, it's because the Blizzard portrayal of Pandaren culture is heavily Japanese. Many in China are still bitter over World War 2. The government, obviously, is looking for openings to exploit that line of thought. A "Look at how Westerners are insulting our culture by comparing them with the hated Japanese" potential to be used as a propaganda tool would give Blizzard cause for concern. Yes, there's some elements of Chinese culture in the Pandaren but it's way more heavily Japanese than anything else.

The Howling Fjord files were inside the "Expansion02" folder, it would have been hard to think of it being just another CoT instance. Given that it was very early on in there (April 2007), one would think that with design priorities focusing on zones before instances, I think it was safe to assume it would be a zone. Implementing a zone like that as an instance seemed a bit odd anyway... I understood that you meant it could have been a CoT instance while the expansion itself could have been about something else.

As for the Wrath Gate series: to put it simply, The Battle for Undercity part of the quest chain is different in that when inside Undercity, Horde are tasked with killing Varimathras and Alliance have to kill Putress. They assault Undercity from opposite ends, Horde goes from the front and Alliance goes from the sewers. Quest-wise, this happens simultaneously, because when Putress is dead as an Alliance player, Varian Wrynn hears about Thrall who has just killed Varimathras and storms the throne room. For Horde players, when Varimathras is dead, Wrynn & Co. storms inside the throne room.

It is not my intention to derail the conversation. That said, and even though the quoted argument is quite well constructed, having lived among the chinese for two years and even speaking their language, I can tell you all that there is not much conscious thought in the vein of respect or reverence for the panda, so to speak. Think of it like the bald eagle. We Americans think of it as a national symbol (I think), but for all that, I have no living memory of someone going out of their way to make a fuss about the eagle. There is even less public nationalism in China toward the panda; but then again it may be that I am the victim of massive coincidence in that no one ever even mentioned it when I was around.

Now, I completely agree that national symbols should not be the targets of people's ridicule. I also know for a fact that the Chinese leaders have really big heads, and want to have their hand in things and throw their weight around things that are really none of their business. Taiwan is a perfect example of this; the Taiwanese govern themselves, and do not possess a great amount of natural resources (like Japan), so why in the world does China even care what they do? But I digress...

By the way, I will be glad to take anyone up in personal messages about this topic, mainly because I am so passionate about all things Chinese, but this thread is not the place to handle it.

SO...
I just read the blue regarding the "previously unrevealed" raid instance. I'm leaning toward something involving Yogg-Saron, personally. He is far too much of a lore personality to forget about, though he may be treated in another expansion. Though, something that I think may be really unique may involve the other old gods that are still around, possibly under the same roof. What I mean is something on the order of a fight with Yogg and some other evil deity at the same time. THERE would be an epic encounter, yes?

Yeah, that was more or less what I was getting at. Sort of like how you can go back to Old Hillsbrad and there's an entire zone there (even if you're only going to very particular places), it's not impossible to imagine going back in time to a zone in the past and finding a quest hub that will take you up an entire level. As in, what if you went to Southshore and there were a bunch of quest givers there? For instance, maybe for level 83-84 you go to the Redridge Mountains circa the summoning of Ragnaros and do various quests from bronze dragon NPCs to ensure that it happens (but also to ensure that the dark iron dwarves are not successful in their conquest). Or perhaps from 85-86 you go to a battlefield of the second war and take various quests from alliance commanders to prevent the horde from getting the upper hand. The idea is that unlike Outlands or Northrend where you just walk from zone to zone, each new zone takes place in a new time period during some epic portion of Warcraft lore.