Expacs: The Good, The Bad, and The Pandas

Ok, so almost immediately after tossing up my last post and talking about the mythical "WoW Killer" I had the urge to rant about something that's been bugging me.
Let's just quickly look at the major points in the previous Warcraft story arcs. In the first expac, The Burning Crusade, the players strode bravely through the dark portal to do battle with the demonic hordes. The second pitted the players against the Lich King Arthas and his undead legions. In the third we saw the corrupted black dragon avatar, Deathwing, rise from the depths to try and wipe all life from Azeroth.  And now we have anthropomorphic pandas.
I can't get over it, they've built an expansion on a race that was originally meant as a gag, a joke. I mean seriously, who can take this seriously?

I do believe that WoW is a good game, it's entertaining, engaging and evolving. I know that suspending disbelief is a major part of any MMO but... talking Panda's are just too far off the bridge for me to follow.