Richard Bartle discusses a disturbing Wrath of the Lich King quest.
I don’t mind having torture in an MMO — it’s the kind of thing a designer can use to give interesting choices that say things to the players. However, I do mind its being placed there casually as a run-of-the-mill quest with no regard for the fact that it would ring alarm bells: this means either that the designer can’t see anything wrong with it, or that they’re actually in favour of it and are forcing it on the player base to make a point. Neither case is satisfactory.
What Bartle missed is that this isn’t actually the first quest where you have to inflict pain on people until they talk – most people will make a deathknight, and as part of their creation, get a mission (complete with specially crafted weapons) to interrogate soldiers until they give up intelligence.
Of course, as a deathknight, you’re supposed to be, well, evil. Right hand of the forces of darkness, etc. etc. So it’s justifiable in that context, and even works in concert with the other quests in this sequence which make a great effort to emphasize hey, you’re not a very nice person (of course setting in motion the inevitable redemption so that you can safely go forth and rid the Outland of hellboars alongside everyone else). But, clearly, that content was reused, and done so without a whole lot of thought. Hey, we have the ability to attach “interrogate NPC” flags to equipment now? Sweet, roll up 3 more quests!
Pretty much no matter how you treat this, issues happen. If you, as Bartle suggests, give some kind of “opt-out” reaction to enable an in-character revulsion to torture, you just stuck a deep political statement into a game where dwarves tool around on Harleys and one of the first NPCs you see as a deathknight is called “Siouxie the Banshee”. If you *don’t*, you just trivialized a deep political statement, or more damningly, shown you don’t really have an opinion on the subject.
Which is all very ironic considering that games like World of Warcraft are all about slaughtering millions of creatures so you can take their stuff and get more powerful so you can take more stuff from more creatures you slaughter. In that context poking people with a painstick before you slaughter them seems like a minor issue.
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There’s one in Burning Crusade in Terrokar Forest. Its the one where you have to go find that merchant that walks up and down the road in front of the cabin with the evil fruitfly moths. You have to go beat him up until he gives you the information you want.
And hello…. the humans that are kept prisoner in Undercity? In the alchemy area? And are milked for blood and stuff? How gruesome is that. Bartle is just NOW getting upset over gruesomeness in WoW? Where the hell has he been?
Just because it’s a game, you expect instant gratification? Or instant punishment, in this case?
In the Kirin Tor quest, you go, do your torture, get your info, get a nice little bonus. (Gold, xp, rep) Warcraft isn’t a world where some deity comes down instantly to slap your hand and move your moral slider more towards evil, (Thank you Fable!) nor is that the intent. You are free to skip it, or move on humming merrily with your loot.
In much the same way that real dictators and relocation specialists (Take your pick of third-world, WWII, or American Indian) move merrily on their way of greater good or whatever. Point is, they’re fine with it at the time, and rewards (good or bad) don’t come around until much later.
I suspect that the devs are just using the achievement system to background ‘tag’ these quests, and sooner or later they’ll all be thrown in your face as to just how ‘pure’ you really are. Nothing says that that is even in the game yet, though, I’d expect it to be much closer to the final Arthas face-off. But a series of quick flashbacks of you stealing, torturing, murdering your way through Northrend would be right in line with his MO, right before he taunts and challenges ya.
So, real-world example. I’ll give you $5 to go torture your neighbor* and send me pictures and a tape recording. I’ll even color the outside of that $5 purple so you can claim it’s a ‘phat epix’.
1) Faint reward, check.
2) No defensible reason, check.
3) Nothing happens if you don’t, check.
Bonus 4) Nothing bad happens if you do, check. (Unless you know ahead of time that the cops may trace it back days,weeks, months down the road)
I feel pretty confidant I won’t be shelling out $5, but you’ll sell your moral righteousness for a quest green and some xp? That’s your choice, not the devs.
Personally, I find it interesting that they’re doing more than “Kill 10 rats”, especially since they’re all for free. Nothing will fall apart if you don’t do the morally questionable quests, you just get a slightly reduced xp/hour. But then, it’s accepted that the MMO world ain’t changing based off your actions, any change is an illusion – this MMO, anyways.
*Please do not do this. Just an example. Srsly.
Richard: What if the guy hadn’t known the answer to your question, and had died after a few pokes with the pain stick? Would that
have been disturbing? Or is the basis of your argument that it’s not a real person being tortured, so it’s (literally!)
immaterial?
Yes that’s exactly it. If you can’t tell the difference between pixels in a computer game and humans you are a deeply distured person and should seek immediate professional help.
By that argument, you should have no trouble with CGI-generated child pornography, since no actual children were involved in its production.
Correct. Harm is the only arguement against child porn.
It seems like half the people here are arguing with Richard over something that he isn’t even saying. Here’s his point, in case you missed it:
That’s it, and he’s right, if you believe such a covenant exists. Your own decision on whether it breaks that covenant for you aside, when applied to the large population of WoW it will be broken for a not-insignificant number of players.
I hope you don’t, just care a little bit less about the people who want to argue for the sake of arguing.
Interestingly enough, in Agmar’s Hammer (in Dragonblight) you receive a letter from Saurfang that questions the tactics that Hellscream is using against the Lich King’s forces.
I know it’ll sound silly, but I did feel better after reading the letter. You can read it here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Letter_from_Saurfang
Richard, you’re right in assuming these quests are a plot device to give the players some insight into the mind of the bad guy, Mr. Metzen clearly said that. I do think you are wrong in expecting instant feedback, however – the conclusion to this moral debate will most probably arrive when the Icecrown story arch is dealt with.
I can’t say that I completely disagreee with Richard here. While I don’t think it is something to alert the media about or start some sort of flame war, that Kirin Tor quest is,at least to me, particularly distasteful. I undersatnd the darker harsher tone they have set for Northrend. And I love the complex morality and ethical debates it spawns. The Deathknight Torture quest is great for this. That questline up through Coldara that ends at the last nexus boss is a great distrubing one that makes you think. And the entire Wrathgate/Undercity line is fantastic for generating good deep debate regarding the morality responsibility and decisions of several of the major NPC’s including Varian Wrynn, Thrall, Sylvanus and Jaina. very deep powerful stuff.
So I understand what they are going for here.
But with that one non DK, Taser the Kirin Tor prisoner quest I think they missed the mark. And like others I told them so during beta. It’s not a huge thing. It certainly isn’t game breaking. It is one quest out of thousands that just doesn’t have a quite right feel to it.
Some dude passing by mentioned it earlier, but I think it merits mentioning again. This… really isn’t new. From day 1, Horde players have assisted the RAS in finding new, painful way for people to die. Hell, at the very elemental level, pretty much every class assaults sentient people with intensely painful attacks that are (In some cases literally, as in its in the spell’s name) agonizing, and then you die.
I’m 100% against Torture IRL, believe me. But… If you’ve waited until WoTLK to decide to have moral objections to certain quests, you’re a little LATE.
Vivianne Draper>And hello…. the humans that are kept prisoner in Undercity? In the alchemy area? And are milked for blood and stuff? How gruesome is that. Bartle is just NOW getting upset over gruesomeness in WoW? Where the hell has he been?
Playing Alliance…
Richard
Hi Richard,
Obviously i can see how you feel about the torture in WoW, my question to you is how how do you feel about the stuff thats in Warhammer? That can get very brutal, but it also has a dark humor side to it.
I’m curious to know how you feel about WAR as an MMO? I know you and Mr.Jacobs go back a very long way.
>Except, in this particular quest, it breached those expectations. I was not expecting to play a game where my “good” character, doing quests for a “good” faction, had to torture some prisoner. Maybe it was within the bounds of what YOU were expecting, but it wasn’t what I was expecting (and I’m not the only person who didn’t like it). It broke the fiction.
You do realize, don’t you, that your “good” character is not a “good” character at that point in time, right? During the phased starting quests, you’re playing a character who’s under Arthas’ influence – or did you miss the whispers of “No mercy” and “Kill them all”?
That’s the point of it, of course. You do evil things while you’re under Arthas’ control, and you have a chance to redeem yourself once you finish the quest line.
Personally, the only thing that irritated me about the quest was that it took so very long. I spent most of my time trying to figure out the mechanics behind it (If I use only white damage, will the interrogation buff proc more or less? Will special strikes make the quest move faster?) than worrying about the morality of it all.
Really, if poking people with pointy sticks bothers you, how do you feel about slaughtering countless thousands of Defias to steal their bandannas?
Richard said “Playing Alliance…”
lol…
come to the dark side. you know you want to. we do torture right.
So when are they going to put in the gay marriage quest? Do we have to wait until the next expansion? I can see it now…
Hail, !
My cart has broken down on my way to wed two male orcs in holy matrimony, could you take my holy book and stand in for me? I'll make it worth your while.
I can’t wait to see the uproar over that one.
This guy says that torture violates the Geneva Convention. Yeah, in real life. There’s very important differences between real people and pixels that Bartle should know about.
But yeah, killing the dragon in The Nexus so she can’t get raped, that’s a real winner. When people ask why they need to kill her in general chat, that’s what people tell them.
Even when Blizzard doesn’t really screw things up, they manage to screw things up.
There’s a quest in Dragonblight where you kill a captured prisoner with poison. It’s the Forsaken who are doing it, so all well and good, but the person who gives you the quest (inexplicably) has a Jewish name and peppers her conversation with Yiddish. If Blizzard was going to make a character like that, was it really necessary to make that character a POISONER, which recalls about a thousand years of anti-semitism?
I said:
What is the difference between Richard’s objections and a PETA member’s objections to slaughtering animals?
Richard replied:
Well, animals aren’t sentient and people are.
It doesn’t matter in this example anyway – I’m against torture, but that doesn’t mean I’m against the depiction of it in MMOs or books or films. What I’m against is the depiction of it in a way that breaks the covenant between designer and player.
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But it doesn’t break any covenant at all, other than the one that you believe to be present between yourself and the designer. The quest line is not necessary to play the game.
You depict your absolute anti-torture stance as the only correct moral stance that could possibly exist in a civilized society, and that is simply not the case, which is why I brought up the PETA thing.
I understand why you, Richard Bartle, do not share the PETA person’s objections to slaughtering animals.
I do not understand why you, Richard Bartle, believe that your anti-torture stance is the only correct moral stance. To my mind, it’s no more so nor less so than the PETA person’s belief.
WoW does not break “the covenant between designer and player” but that assumes that such a covenant is based upon absolute moral authority – meaning, moral authority that we all agree with. WoW does not have questlines involving the massacre of children, for example, or raping women – certainly things that do happen but never without condemnation (unlike torture under certain circumstances).
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