Who will I start a knitting circle with??

I'm going to confidently say that this post is spoiler free. There is no information about the new quests or storylines and no pictures, and if you don't already know the names Aysa or The Wandering Isle by now you probably don't even play WoW.

I got my pandaren out of the starting zone and into the Alliance! It was pretty enjoyable, definitely beautiful, and well-orchestrated. (Yeah, I put my background music on loop.)

But you know what's creepy? The Wandering Isle is a sausagefest. In my RP experience, meaning that I am the only player character who exists on the island populated with NPCs, there are only 4 women out of 55 humanoid characters. There's me, obviously, and Aysa. There's also Lien-Hua, a female blacksmith hanging out near the temple, and one female human called Delora Lionheart. (Great last name because it reminds me of this fantastic song!)

I realize that this is likely a result of the female pandaren model being designed well after the male one, and the island being populated before it was complete. I imagine that's why Lien-Hua is only female in title and still uses the male model as a placeholder. But that means that when someone went back to add some lady pandas to the starting zone, from over 50 potential NPCs they chose...two. I know it's not a malicious choice. There's no evil Blizz overlord twirling his mustache and cackling. It's not actively cruel. It's just telling me that I'm an afterthought, a reminder. Fifty-one out of fifty-four times, a female character doesn't even register.

Back in the day, this did annoy me. Not enough to cancel my sub, but enough to grate. Now it just makes me tired. Same old, same old. In Cata we met the sweet Tolvir cat dudes, who lacked for dudettes but not offspring (I like to think they reproduce by budding those magnificent pecs.) Therazane was a fantastic introduction in Deepholm, but still managed to have all-male servants. The sons of the Stone Father were, well, sons. Unfortunate because their model is spectacular, confusing because where do lady dwarves come from...? Those awesome gnomes in Ulduar have the same problem - great model, complete lack of female equivalent. The Taunka are a sore spot for me, in that they "have" a female counterpart recycling the old tauren model. It's going to happen again with the Yaunka, that have 6 distinct fur colors and no female model. I was hoping for some long-faced relatives for Aka! Gnolls, troggs, kobolds, ogres. (Too gross to be female? Spend two hours with me on chili night and we'll talk.)

The point of this laundry list isn't to accuse developers of hating women or whatever. My point is just that despite comprising half the plant, when it comes to inclusion, women are an afterthought. A character that's sexy, that's a caster, that's a mother recalls the need for a female model. Everything else...why design a female model when you can just make it male? When I was a kid I used to draw a lot, and one of my favorite shows was Sailor Moon so I had a lot of examples of the female form. After a few years I realized that I was total crap at drawing men, so I made a conscious effort to draw more male figures until I had a better idea. If a 15 year old can independently recognize the need for balance, I like to think that pointing out the overwhelmingly sausage-y undercarriage of Azeroth should be enough reason to freshen it up with some diversity. Unless, I suppose, they are really pandering to the overwhelmingly slashy legion of shippers?