Gosh, this should have been the first expansion. Granted, I dig the art style, it fits very well with the graphics engine, but its hard to be really excited about it. Don't get me wrong, I think it would be refreshing to explore a new continent that hasn't really been exploited in Warcraft lore. I haven't played WoW seriously since WotLK, but this seems to be a step back in the thrill department. I'm not sure I buy the "catering to Asian audiences" bit, cause honestly, this can be seen as tremendously stereotypical to that ethnicity. Yeah, I know - Pandarans were asked for YEARS ago, but their own expansion?
My guess is that they're trying to cater to the younger crowd since their original demographic is aging and have bigger, more interesting games on the horizon. I really hope this new continent is as large, if not larger than Burning Crusade's was. Since the fundamental reboot of the original world in Cataclysm was pretty much a dud (critically, not commercially), they've really got to try something new, and this is about as far as a departure as you can get from how the game's themes were going. I'm sure it'll sell like Christmas crack in Times Square for the Warcraft Nation, but meh...