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.
#1 by BugHunter on November 21st, 2008
I wonder if Richard ever initiated the attack on any single NPC in the entire game. My guess is that he did initiate combat on occasion. Not so much self defense if you go out looking for wildlife to slaughter is it? In which case, is torture worse than genocide?
#2 by wowpanda on November 21st, 2008
LOL, it is just a game. So many people fired up. Reminded me when years ago when republicans took office, the first thing they did was hung cloth around breasts of naked sculptures in Washington (i.e We have the moral high ground crap).
#3 by wowpandawrong on November 21st, 2008
Acctually it took a while for them to hang the cloth around the breats of the statue. They did it because it was a press hobby to try and see how much of the breasts they could get in the frame.
#4 by Viz on November 21st, 2008
Torture is bad, but there’s worse. If a doomsday-type situation (and the whole crazy dragon bit is a doomsday-type situation, as far as the game’s mages are concerned) were to actually occur, I would hope that whoever is charged with stopping it would be willing to commit an immoral personal act rather than let his people be annihilated.
What pisses me off about the quest is that it should be the person whose ass is on the line (i.e. Kirin Tor quest giver dude) who does the dirty work. Subcontracting it doesn’t absolve him of blame for the act, because he caused it, and it’s furthermore unethical in that he’s inciting another person to perform an unethical act.
#5 by Richard Bartle on November 21st, 2008
Matt Mihaly>But avatars don’t have morality. People do.
Yes, I know this.
>You’re not actually torturing a being when you “torture” an NPC. In the fiction, your character may be but it’s no more immoral to include torture in a book than it is in a game.
Let’s say J. K. Rowling brought out an 8th Harry Potter book. It’s just the same as all the other books, except in chapter 7 all of a sudden Harry goes off the rails, takes drugs, kidnaps Hermione and subjects her to untold indignities to satisfy his new-found sado-masochistic desires. Now J. K. is allowed to put that kind of things in her books if she likes, freedom of speech being what it is and all, but people who have been buying the earlier books in the series have certain expectations about what the books are like, and this would shatter them.
Likewise, in WoW: it’s not the right of the designers to put torture into WoW that concerns me, it’s what that does for the relationship between designer and player. It’s stepped over the line.
Richard
#6 by Richard Bartle on November 21st, 2008
Ubvman>I don’t get this Bartle.
Yes, that’s right.
>He plays the game throughout (not that he’s “enjoying it”) – all the while holding his nose so as not to sully his academic high-falutin “credentials”.
No, you completely misunderstand. I’m not doing this for any academic credentials at all (maybe half the academics at the conference I went to last week not only didn’t play games but were actually proud of it; playing MMOs hurts my academic credentials). I’m doing this for credentials when I speak to gamers.
>Then he grabs on to some aspect of the gameplay that does not fit his politically correct worldview as just one more thing to bash the game?
Have you read my blog? I put all sorts of things in there, at varying levels of significance. It’s not as if I was writing some gravitas-filled treatise on the morality of WoW, I was just blogging about something that had annoyed me that day. I didn’t get Colchester Leisure Centre jumping on me when I moaned about the stupid barrier system on their car parks. You, however, feel perfectly happy to weigh in with accusations that I’m looking for sticks with which to beat Wow.
>Yes, we get it Mr. Bartle, you don’t like the game
No, you don’t get it. I DO like the game – it’s one of my favourite MMOs. I just don’t like having to play it.
>(get off my lawn you kids!) and nothing will ever match the Diku you helped created decades ago.
This would make more sense if I had actually helped create a Diku. However, as I have never been to the Datalogisk Institut Københavns Universitet, it seems unlikely that I would have worked on their game (especially as I’d been working on MUDs for 13 years by the time DikuMUD was written).
>I’m just thinking, why the F – do the MMOG blogosphere still consider him as any sort of a relevant commentator these days?
Beats me. However, when people as ill-informed and eager-to-snipe as you start throwing around their opinions, it can only make me look relatively authoritative.
Richard
#7 by Athryn on November 21st, 2008
I ran across this quest during the beta, and I left feedback that I thought it was an unpleasant quest to do, and that I found it frustrating that they left no alternate means of getting the information. I didn’t mind the torture quest as a DK, because a DK is bad, and that’s what they did, but for some reason I found it profoundly unsettling to do it on my Paladin.
#8 by Soulflame on November 21st, 2008
I hit the torture quest in Borean, and complained about it in guild chat. I was not pleased to be asked to taser an NPC until he was willing to talk, but I did it anyway, in no small part because they told me it was part of a fairly long (and rewarding) quest chain, both in terms of loot and lore. I was then informed this was not the last time I was going to get to torture someone into talking, which of course I was even less pleased about.
For the most part, Wrath has cast the player as a hero. Protecting the Taunka and the Walrus men, fighting undead and the minions of Malygos(?) is fine. Torturing prisoners for information because… I’m less moral than an NPC? I don’t like being told that.
#9 by Bonedead on November 21st, 2008
Well these must be new and trying times in the land of Azeroth which call for desperate measures.
Maybe Blizzard wanted it to become a topic of conversation so that everyone’s focus is back on WoW 100%.
Maybe a high percentage of the 9 million childrens’ parents agree with you Mr. Bartle, in which case I would suggest an online petition be started and a movement to notify the parents as well.
#10 by wowpanda on November 21st, 2008
US has became way over protective now. If you block all germs from kids, their immune system will be less trained and germs became more dangers.
It is similar on a psychological level.
#11 by Todd Ogrin on November 21st, 2008
The notion that torturing people is evil but killing people is fine strikes me as pretty strange. I imagine a road sign that reads: “SPEED LIMIT 30 MPH (or greater than 100 MPH)”.
#12 by Richard Bartle on November 21st, 2008
Dave G.>You aren’t torturing someone by doing these quests any more than you are committing murder by playing Call of Duty
Yes, that’s right. However, when you sign up to play CoD you know what you’re getting into. When you sign up for WoW, you know what you’re getting into. You have expectations of what will be there and what won’t. I know there won’t be Coca Cola bottles or Vote Obama signs or Wear a Condom posters unless in some parody form.
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 are not an immoral person because you play a computer game, and a computer game does not make you immoral.
Of course not, but then I never said this was the case. Torture is fine in games when depicted in context – I haven’t played as a DK, but it sounds to me as if its use there makes sense. It shows just how evil DKs start out. In the example in question, though, it doesn’t make sense – there’s no reason for it, and it’s completely out of context. It’s unpleasant to be asked to do it, and while doing it doesn’t make me immoral, it does make me wonder about the morality of whoever designed it.
>If Richard can no longer separate in-character game behaviours from real world, real life thought processes and feelings, then it is he who has lost perspective.
I’m glad you put the “If” there, although it’s a little alarming that you might think that somehow I had lost the ability to determine fact from fiction here…
>But equating completion of an in-game quest to condoning torture and creating a generation of children with the “evil bit” set is blowing it way out of proportion.
I gave this as an example of how the inclusion of the quest could be read, had it been done to make some point. I’m not saying that’s how it was intended, but if a designer wanted (through their design) to make some kind of political statement about the real world, this is how they would do it. However, I ruled this out in the end, because there was no confirmation that it was some kind of statement. If, for example, you had lost 10,000 points of Kirin Tor reputation for doing it, that would have shown that it was making such a statement. The fact that it’s treated as a run-of-the-mill quest suggests it wasn’t an attempt to use WoW as a vehicle for Art.
Personally, I think Scott is right. Someone just re-used a new quest mechanic without really giving it a lot of thought.
>These are just more of the same arguments.
No, they’re a different argument entirely. This is the argument that says you’re fine seeing racist abuse in South Park but if the same abuse appeared in The Simpsons you wouldn’t be happy about it.
Richard
#13 by bjornstar on November 21st, 2008
I think they should remove all the violence from the game and replace all the quests with “Give 10 cupcakes to children” and “Create 5 rainbows” because that’s really what everyone wants. We can call it World of Morality and everyone will be happy. I’m sure it will be a bestseller.
No one wants to play these violent games where you are forced to torture people, I mean look at the sales numbers…
#14 by Jerid on November 21st, 2008
I’m no WOW fanboy by any means but this is by not anything new to WoW.
Unless beating up slaves to get them to work is somehow considered ok?
(The orc starter zone quest where you’re given a cudgel and told to go beat X number of lazy peons so they get back to work which has been in the game since beta)
#15 by Tom Bloodgood on November 21st, 2008
After you torture the guy and get the information you want, you can torture him some more and he keeps telling you “I already told you what you want to know, please stop!”
When you turn the quest in, the quest giver is surprised that he told you what you wanted to know.
My initial feeling when he asked me to torture the guy was one of trepidation. I made sure I examined my feelings about it and it did make me squirm when I did it. After getting what I wanted, I continued the torture to see if Blizzard would put anything more in there, perhaps to show that his first response was a lie or maybe even to show that if you go too far, he dies. Unfortunately, two more attempts resulted in just the same response above. At that point, that was as far as I wanted to go with it and I completed the quest.
Now, I did immediately therafter go look for some Alliance to poke with the torture stick, but the quest giver took it away as soon as I turned in the quest. I would have no qualms at all about using it on Alliance.
#16 by Mr_PeaCH on November 21st, 2008
> I think they should remove all the violence from the game and replace all the quests with “Give 10 cupcakes to children” and “Create 5 rainbows” because that’s really what everyone wants. We can call it World of Morality and everyone will be happy.
And fill a world with obese, gay kids? Not in my World of Morality you don’t. Think of the children, indeed.
#17 by Richard Bartle on November 21st, 2008
Amaranthar>According to him, it’s better to give the choice to players, and thus it’s socially redeeming.
Well, that would depend on the choice.
>So you get some kids playing “evil” things out of choice, and perhaps a degree of spite and meanness. Building that kind of thinking, reaffirming it, growing the planted seed. And that’s ok, according to Bartle.
Gawd, you really don’t get what I’m saying here.
All MMO design is making some kind of statement. Designers have many decisions they could have made, so the ones they actually did make must in some way reflect their views. So, if someone wants to create an MMO which puts forward a particular political or moral viewpoint, then OK, I personally may be pleased or horrified by what they’re doing, but unless it goes to far then the laws governing free speech allow it either way.
I most certainly as not saying that merely because an MMO includes something, that makes this something automatically good, wholesome and fun. There are many things in the current MMO paradigm that I don’t like (eg. stereotyping characters by race), but that other people are fine with. That’s how freedom of speech works: if I want to be able to say what I think, I have to accept that you get to say what you think, too.
So no, I don’t think that subtly trying to manipulate players into accepting unpalatable ideas is a good thing. However, stopping people from saying things I don’t like, merely because I don’t like them, is worse.
>At any rate, I’m glad to see Bartle confronting his own “we’ve got your children” thing.
What “we’ve got your children” thing? I haven’t mentioned children once in any of this.
Richard
#18 by Dan on November 21st, 2008
Richard, if they just gave you a set of fist weapons that are feathers…and you tickle the information out of the npcs, would that be acceptable?
#19 by Tuncal on November 21st, 2008
I’m 99% sure that these quests were put in with the precise design of creating moral ambiguity. The designers creating an interesting experiment: “At what point will the players stop and say: No, that is far too evil for my character to do, regardless of the reward!”. There have been lots of morally ambiguous quests in World of WARcraft’s past: feeding plague potions to prisoners, wiping entire factions into extinction, assassinating leaders to demoralize the enemy armies, butchering populations of non-hostile wildlife, etc – all of which are entirely optional quests, which do not lock you out of experiencing content. This is just one step further on the same path, and it seems quite a deliberate decision.
#20 by Tuncal on November 21st, 2008
Chris Metzen one year ago : “We want to add some layers of psychology that put you in strange moral situations of how you fight the good fight that mimic some of Arthas’ own experiences…. By the time you reach level 80 [the expansion's new level cap], by the time you stand toe-to-toe with this bastard, do you still have your pretty principles and highfalutin morality, or is it a mirror reflection? Arthas is after that as much as global domination. It’s a hook that makes it personal that Burning Crusade didn’t have.”
#21 by Matt Mihaly on November 21st, 2008
Richard wrote:
Let’s say J. K. Rowling brought out an 8th Harry Potter book. It’s just the same as all the other books, except in chapter 7 all of a sudden Harry goes off the rails, takes drugs, kidnaps Hermione and subjects her to untold indignities to satisfy his new-found sado-masochistic desires. Now J. K. is allowed to put that kind of things in her books if she likes, freedom of speech being what it is and all, but people who have been buying the earlier books in the series have certain expectations about what the books are like, and this would shatter them.
Likewise, in WoW: it’s not the right of the designers to put torture into WoW that concerns me, it’s what that does for the relationship between designer and player. It’s stepped over the line.
They already have you committing mass murder and essentially (futiley) attempting genocide on a regular basis. I’m sure the pbase can handle a little torture with their genocide. I also note a lot of players of WoW on here seeming to disagree that it’s damaged their relationship with Blizzard. Is it possible that you’re injecting your own preferences here but presenting them as universals?
–matt
–matt
#22 by Matt Mihaly on November 21st, 2008
Richard wrote:
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.
Are you really advocating for one-dimensional caricatures? Mortals who can only be evil or good, where those are rigidly and objectively defined? Maybe I’m mis-reading you, but that’s what it sounds like you’re saying.
–matt
#23 by Matt Mihaly on November 21st, 2008
Ahh, and it seems I’m not even finished. Sorry about the multiple posts, all.
I had to comment on the Harry Potter analogy, Richard. You wrote, “Let’s say J. K. Rowling brought out an 8th Harry Potter book. It’s just the same as all the other books, except in chapter 7 all of a sudden Harry goes off the rails, takes drugs, kidnaps Hermione and subjects her to untold indignities to satisfy his new-found sado-masochistic desires. Now J. K. is allowed to put that kind of things in her books if she likes, freedom of speech being what it is and all, but people who have been buying the earlier books in the series have certain expectations about what the books are like, and this would shatter them.”
That would actually break expectations, though I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’d break expectations because Harry Potter doesn’t, to my knowledge (I’ve only seen the movies, so don’t know much about the last two books in the series), already engage in things worse than kidnapping Hermione and raping her or whatever. This is fundamentally different from WoW, where you’re already engaging in simulated mass murder regardless of which faction you play on.
In other words, to echo a previous poster, Harry Potter has a “speed limit 55″ sign, whereas you seem to want WoW to have a “speed limit up to 55 or over 105″.
–matt
#24 by wowpanda on November 21st, 2008
Matt has a great point, I remember long time ago I was forced in a quest to chose one faction and kill another (both faction looks like horseman).
If Richard really want some kind of restriction, China got a great example. The government there already forced Blizzard to put flesh on undead and removed all corpses to make the game less offending.
#25 by hellfire on November 21st, 2008
Richard, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I think you’re looking for some sort of sort of deeper meaning, hidden agenda or perverse pathology where, frankly, none exists. I think you’re creating a tempest in a teapot for no better reason than to talk about teapots. That’s all fine and good, I guess. I’m all for the a random intellectual circle-jerk.
The moral indignation might better be served by discussing the effects of ACTUAL torture on ACTUAL people. Reprehensible actions that are being conducted not only by my very own countrymen, but in MY name and under the auspices of protecting my freedom. How does THAT affect children? How does THAT affect our culture? What damage has the public-at-large’s quiet acceptance of this villainy caused to our shared psyche?
There is no blurry line between WoW and life. WoW is a fucking game. Anyone confused by that fact has issues that have no causal connection to WoW or any other game.
The mythos of WoW is generally sound. For a game. The Warcraft lore has been retcon’d more than once to craft a more enjoyable interactive experience. That’s not something I really care too much about. The quests in general fit within the framework of the game. Beyond “oh god, more poop?” or “DIE NEESINGWARY, DIE!!” there’s really no point where I was disconnected from the experience. I don’t roam the countryside asking passersby “’sup, thou”, but I’d like to think I play a persona. The content supports me in that endeavor. Morally ambiguous is the very definition of my rogue.
Would I love to see a game that had branching quest trees that allowed the player to choose their own adventure? Absolutely. But I’d also like to play a game with more than 10 quests released every year.
#26 by Ardanna on November 21st, 2008
I didn’t see a place to comment on his blog and I didn’t feel like e-mail or reading all 75 comments yet because I have minutes left on lunch but…
…as a small minor point this quest is not necessary to access, well, anything. You can happily enter the Nexus without doing any quests as I did. The dragon there will give you the flight path, you then take the short walk to the Nexus and zone in.
Your revulsion at the torture is fair enough in that people can react however they want, but your belief that you cannot enter the nexus and have no choice in doing so are both wrong. You could have simply not partaken in the quest, you could have even roleplayed it out, refusing loudly and then hitting abandon.
I feel like I’m missing something here…
#27 by Recursion on November 21st, 2008
LoL!!
This:
Merc Says:
November 21, 2008 at 9:30 am
Richard Bartle jumps the shark.
#28 by Delmania on November 21st, 2008
“Matt has a great point, I remember long time ago I was forced in a quest to chose one faction and kill another (both faction looks like horseman).”
That quest, along with the undead quest where you feed a potion to an NPC to kill him fit within the context of situation. The quest giver in the former spells out “we have to do this, we’ve tried peace, it’s doesn’t work”. In the latter, you’re told on creation that the undead are actively working to create a new plague. In the Death Knight torture quest, you’re the mindless pawn of an evil entity.
In the quest that Bartle is referring to, he’s a paladin in the Alliance torturing someone for information. It’s about the designer establishing the proper context in which the player will do actions.
#29 by Pai on November 21st, 2008
DKs aren’t the only class that get a quest to torture… there is also a general quest for everyone in a later zone in Northrend where you torture someone with a hot brand and then kill them, and frankly I thought it was kind of sick. That and the quest where you’re sent to kill members of a tribe that is hostile to the questgiver and kidnap their babies for him. I mean, wtf… since when do ‘good guys’ do stuff like that?
I understand having Undead/DeathKnight/Warlock class quests that are dark and evil, but just putting those kinds of quests for everyone as if it’s just natural for ‘heroes’ to do such things is just… a strangely amoral decision.
#30 by Pai on November 21st, 2008
An addendum: I can reconcile killing animals for defense/military reasons. But torturing helpless prisoners is something that is just really strange for ‘heroes’ to be doing… and if Blizzard wanted to -really- add a morally ambiguous ‘choice’ aspect to Northrend, shouldn’t they have made such choices actually MATTER, instead of simply penalizing people who choose not to do such acts on a character that has been, throughout the majority of the game’s plot, been someone that’s supposed to be a noble and honorable character?
#31 by Tom Bloodgood on November 21st, 2008
Am I the only person who saw how this quest tied in with the rest of what is going on on the Horde side?
Its come down to a battle of philosophies between Thrall and Garrosh. Both of them want to push the war against Arthas, but Thrall is more reserved about it. They explained their positions in the small in-game event in Orgrimmar right before the expansion came out. They even came to blows on the way to prosecute the war.
This quest is on Amber Ledge. Right outside of Warsong Hold. Which just happens to be under the iron thumb of Garrosh. It would make sense that they would want to do whatever Garrosh wants to do, but, as has been mentioned above, they’re group, Kirin Tor, do not believe in torture.
#32 by Tom Bloodgood on November 21st, 2008
Weird, it killed my link.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Garrosh_Hellscream
#33 by Vaxhacker on November 21st, 2008
Personally, I think the Netherwing quest that involved poisoning the Dragonmaw peons was far worse, ethically speaking, than this torture quest. “Here’s some food, guys. Ha ha it’s actually going to kill you.” But, as an undead character, I had no problem with either (fictionally), given that I’d done a fair amount of nasty deeds in the service of my homeland.
#34 by Pai on November 21st, 2008
The Kirin Tor have a torture quest too, as well as the Forsaken in Dragonblight. I’m only 75, so I don’t know if there are more out there, but it really seems to me like Blizzard is just ‘forcing’ people to do morally ambiguous/abhorrent things so that they can conveniently tie in a ‘You’re not as righteous as you think!’ plot device at the end. It’s very unnatural and forced, though. I’d really almost label it as bad storytelling and lazy design.
#35 by Viz on November 21st, 2008
Even if the players were just as evil as Arthas, they’d have a perfectly valid (lore) reason to go kick Arthas’s ass: the fact that Arthas wants to kill them.
#36 by Sheepherder on November 22nd, 2008
Blizzard is trying to draw parallels between the player and Arthas, who is an evil badass because of his quest for revenge, zealotry, and his misguided attempts to save Lordaeron from the Burning Legion and the Scourge.
The problem is that they’re really bad at it. The Kirin Tor might torture people (remember the prison level in the human campaign for The Frozen Throne?) but why the character does it is because… well, the wizard tells you to, and he gives you the implement to do it (and you’re not allowed to “get creative”), and you go ahead and do it right in the middle of a tower filled with Wizards.
Personally, I take issue that my rogue and warrior are forced to use a wand, that I can’t fight him like a man before beating the snot out of him on my warrior, and that my warlock isn’t able to make him rot alive or light him on fire. That is the fiction killer for me, the generic one-size-fits-all wand of brain stabbing. Bartle (as a paladin) thinks this doesn’t synch well with his avatar altogether, so why wasn’t this pivotal plot mechanic (You != holier than Arthas) done in a way which was class-specific and designed with the intent that it would be at the very least acceptable on a per-character basis?
#37 by Richard Bartle on November 22nd, 2008
Matt Mihaly>They already have you committing mass murder and essentially (futiley) attempting genocide on a regular basis.
They have you committing mass killings; whether it’s murder or legitimate homicide is another matter. There’s been no genocide in the game from what I’ve seen so far, at least not genocide described up front as such (eg. you may find that having 50 players all trying to do the same kill-the-murlocs quest means there are no murlocs left in that tribe until the respawns appear – it’s a tragedy of the commons kind of genocide, not a deliberate “wipe them all out!” one).
>I also note a lot of players of WoW on here seeming to disagree that it’s damaged their relationship with Blizzard.
Are there any saying it’s enhanced it?
It’s something that has disturbed some players (but not all), but up until now I haven’t seen anyone saying that they enjoyed torturing the prisoner; those who don’t object to it seem to take it in their stride, but they’re not raving about how great it is you can torture people in WoW.
If you add up the cumulative effect of the opinions of all players, many more people disapproved than approved, and the rest seemed not bothered about it.
>Is it possible that you’re injecting your own preferences here but presenting them as universals?
I was most definitely stating my own opinion, yes, but I wasn’t claiming any universality. If my opinions were universal, Blizzard wouldn’t have done the torture thing in the first place. I was claiming:
1) I, personally, did not like being asked to torture the guy. YOU may be fine with it, but I wasn’t. I’m not the only person who didn’t like it, either.
2) There are legitimate reasons for putting this kind of shock thing into a game like WoW, but:
2a) If (as a designer) you’re going to put this kind of thing into a game deliberately, you have to have consequences to show that you are indeed doing it deliberately. There are none here.
2b) It’s possible that the designers didn’t know it was going to shock anyone. They may have the same attitude to torture that you do.
3) Neither 2a) nor 2b) is satisfactory.
Now there are people here saying that they have different expectations of what’s fine in Wow. Fair enough, if they think that torture is of small consequence compared to everything else they do, that’s their opinion. They’re probably lobbying the UN to have the convention on the treatment of prisoners repealed right now.
However, Blizzard should have known that some people would baulk at torturing people. If they didn’t, that’s bad – someone there should have picked up on it. If they did, well that means they’ve kept it in deliberately, in order to make some point. What would that point be? Well it could be text (“you think the bad guy is bad, but actually you’re just as bad as he is”) or it could be subtext (“how do you like the fact that your government does this?”). In either case, though, there has to be a consequence for it to be a statement. Otherwise, it’s like an “if” with no “then”. Why is that important? Well, because without it the message is entirely lost on those players who weren’t shocked by it. If you don’t think there’s anything wrong with torture, you’re not going to think you’re following in the footsteps of the bad guy by doing it, unless you get some kind of feedback. The only feedback you get is that the good guys (the Kirin Tor) like you more for having done it, which seems to say that the decision was the right one. That’s even more disturbing, though!
>Are you really advocating for one-dimensional caricatures? Mortals who can only be evil or good, where those are rigidly and objectively defined? Maybe I’m mis-reading you, but that’s what it sounds like you’re saying.
It’s not what I’m saying. Yes, of course there are ambiguities, and of course people have different opinions of things. However, I was playing a game that I felt operated within certain conventions, and when I encountered something that broke those conventions then it changed the nature of the game I was playing. If I were playing a game that was altogether darker in theme, then I’d be OK with torture because it was in context (even though I’m not OK with it in real life). This was just not in context. This isn’t an argument about good and evil, it’s about being asked to do something I didn’t want to do for no apparently justifiable reason, and what this says about the standards of the people who asked me to do it.
That would actually break expectations, though I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’d break expectations because Harry Potter doesn’t, to my knowledge (I’ve only seen the movies, so don’t know much about the last two books in the series), already engage in things worse than kidnapping Hermione and raping her or whatever. This is fundamentally different from WoW, where you’re already engaging in simulated mass murder regardless of which faction you play on.
>In other words, to echo a previous poster, Harry Potter has a “speed limit 55″ sign, whereas you seem to want WoW to have a “speed limit up to 55 or over 105″.
I want WoW to have the same speed limit throughout. In some areas it might be slower, and in other areas faster, but there is an overall limit. If all previous content has been at 55mph or slower, then suddenly something comes out at 105mph, then that’s going to change my driving experience somewhat. Now some people may have thought the limit was 105mph all along, and be glad that finally they got out of that tiresome 55mph zone. Others, though, were playing in the belief that it was 55mph, and if it suddenly goes to 105mph for no good reason, well that’s going to affect them.
Richard
#38 by Richard Bartle on November 22nd, 2008
Sheepherder>Blizzard is trying to draw parallels between the player and Arthas, who is an evil badass because of his quest for revenge, zealotry, and his misguided attempts to save Lordaeron from the Burning Legion and the Scourge.
>The problem is that they’re really bad at it.
This is it in a nutshell.
Richard
#39 by Xanthippe on November 22nd, 2008
Philosophically, I don’t have a big problem with torture in certain circumstances. I had no trouble doing this quest.
As others have pointed out, the quest is not necessary to finish the game. Does it lock a person out of content if they opt not to do it? A little, but nothing vital.
What is the difference between Richard’s objections and a PETA member’s objections to slaughtering animals?
I see no difference.
#40 by Bawlzdeep on November 22nd, 2008
The game’s culture is steeped in torture. Have you ever been in Barrens chant?!
#41 by miber on November 22nd, 2008
Richard Bartle>Are there any saying it’s enhanced it?
It’s something that has disturbed some players (but not all), but up until now I haven’t seen anyone saying that they enjoyed torturing the prisoner; those who don’t object to it seem to take it in their stride, but they’re not raving about how great it is you can torture people in WoW.<
They’re not praising that quest because it was lame. I had to kill like 10 guys before one finally talked. At the time, the quest felt pretty run-of-the-mill, and I never thought twice about the “torture” aspect. I found the killing of civilians/prisoners to be much more objectionable (not that I personally had any problems with that, either).
Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the Death Knight starting quests. I thought it really helped set the mood that you were starting off the game as ‘the bad guy,’ whereas with every other class/race it’s not as black and white. I also thought it was ballsy of Blizzard to handle it the way they did – which, while not being particularly ‘mature,’
was a little more than I would have expected in WoW (although, for comparison, it’d be fairly tame for Diablo).
So, did it enhance view of Blizzard? In a way, yes. But I’d still play WoW, regardless, I still plan on buying SC2 and D3, and the sum of it’s effect is negligible at best.
Note – I haven’t done any of the other “torture,” quests, but at least I’ve actually experienced the one I talk about.
#42 by Richard Bartle on November 22nd, 2008
Xanthippe>Philosophically, I don’t have a big problem with torture in certain circumstances. I had no trouble doing this quest.
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?
>What is the difference between Richard’s objections and a PETA member’s objections to slaughtering animals?
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.
I encountered the quest where you have to put wolf people’s children in sacks a dozen at a time today (it’s a daily). So we’re looking at one of the following:
a) the designer doesn’t think that’s kinda sick in any way.
b) the designer does think it’s sick but thinks that makes it amusing.
c) the designer believes children can be born irredeemably evil.
d) the designer wants to make some point, but doesn’t want to tell us what it is.
e) the designer wants to make some point, but hasn’t done so very well.
f) [more]
There do seem to be several of these morally dubious quests. I don’t know if it’s a deliberate pattern, though. Is rescuing mammoths in one quest only to be told to slaughter them for their blubber in another deliberate or just coincidence?
The more of these there are, the greater the chance they’re deliberate rather than “let’s re-use the torture quest” style accident. That would be fine if there were confirmation of it by giving the choices immediate consequences. There isn’t, though, so if this new inclusion of morally ambiguous quests is deliberate, it’s probably either a misfired attempt to darken the atmosphere or as a result of some general design decision to give players some insight into the mind of the bad guy. This latter idea would be laudable if they gave the feedback. They don’t, though.
Aside: I can see I’m going to have to stop blogging about WoW, it always seems to end up with me spending hours writing posts elsewhere explaining what I mean…
Richard
#43 by Iconic on November 22nd, 2008
I would feel uncomfortable role playing rape, and I feel uncomfortable role playing torture and murder.
I actually don’t mind the quest that Richard was talking about, because contrary to his assertion, it’s actually NOT required for entrance to the Nexus. You can simply walk up to the dragon there, say “yo dragon, take me to Coldarra” and you’re there. Or you can have guild mates summon you there.
The ones that bother me are the Death Knight quests. Because of the phasing technique and the scripted way in which you gain access to your DK’s abilities, you cannot actually play a Death Knight outside of the starting area until you have participated in torture and murder.
The key element for me is PARTICIPATION. It wouldn’t bother me to see a cut scene where my character (who is under the control of an alien being) commits acts of torture or murder (though the less graphic, the better), but it bothers me greatly that I am required to push the button.
#44 by Iconic on November 22nd, 2008
PS, in regard to the Wolvar quest: I may have misunderstood it, but the way I understand it is that the Wolvar children are being kidnapped in order to protect them from the war that’s going to engulf their parents. The quest giver presents his dilemma: We have a right to live, but so do the Wolvar. The Wolvar will not stop trying to kill us, so it is kill or be killed. How can I do the right thing (protect my rights) without committing genocide? Answer: Kidnap the children, raise them outside the influence of their parents, and kill their parents.
#45 by Iconic on November 22nd, 2008
Okay, here’s the quest text when you are given the quest:
“We must move decisively against the wolvar if we’re to have a chance of survival. However, I worry that in our zeal, too many of them will be slain.
The Snowfall Glade wolvar have as much right to exist as do we. You and I will see to it that they get that chance.
If Elder Ko’nani hasn’t asked you already, he will ask you to deal with them. While you’re upon the glade to the north, I’d like you to bag up their pups and bring them back to me. ”
And upon completion of the quest, the quest giver says:
“Well, I guess you saved plenty of them. Thank you, .
Now the wolvar will have a chance of surviving along with us. If we survive at all, that is.
Do you think that you could return tomorrow so that we can save more of the pups?”
#46 by Sheepherder on November 23rd, 2008
@Iconic
Racial resettlement: Good idea?
Note: Wikipedia is blatantly wrong about the “Ghost Dance”, in case you decide to read that far in.
Moving on: Blizzard wants their game to be “darker”. Good, sounds sufficiently compelling, and this is something I thought WoW was lacking that Warcraft III had. But where’s the emotion, the setup, the aftermath? if this is meant to be grotesque and guilt-ridden why isn’t it more personal and brutal? If not then why did they even include it? Arthas butchered a city, and I’m supposed to be akin to him because I caused a rogue wizard severe discomfort and in the end saved an innocent person?
Bartle is quite right about this, the content might be fine*. But the context is all wrong, this has taught me nothing, it has evoked no serious reaction in terms of role-playing: it’s just another short quest. And that is seriously wrong considering the content, this should have been crafted to stir up as much reaction as possible (in the player, not necessarily on Lum’s blog) because it’s supposed to be a really touchy and heart-wrenching topic.
* Maybe I’m misconstruing him and he thinks there is no place for this in WoW at all and that Blizzard has no right to introduce it in, I don’t think this is necessarily his reaction though.
#47 by Iconic on November 23rd, 2008
Sheepherder:
Racial resettlement: Better than genocide.
#48 by Richard Bartle on November 23rd, 2008
SheepherderMaybe I’m misconstruing him and he thinks there is no place for this in WoW at all and that Blizzard has no right to introduce it in, I don’t think this is necessarily his reaction though.
You’re right, it’s not my reaction. Blizzard can put what they like in WoW – it’s their game. Likewise, people don’t have to play if they find it leaves a nasty taste in their mouths.
Iconic>I actually don’t mind the quest that Richard was talking about, because contrary to his assertion, it’s actually NOT required for entrance to the Nexus.
Yes, it seems they changed it at some point. I thought it was required, because people kept LFGing saying that you “need the flight path”. It seems you don’t.
Still, that doesn’t alter the basic point: you’re asked to torture some guy for no defensible reason, with only good things happening if you do and nothing happening if you don’t.
>the way I understand it is that the Wolvar children are being kidnapped in order to protect them from the war that’s going to engulf their parents.
Well, that’s what they said, yes. Even if they’re not going to slaughter them when you’re not looking, this still sounds warped to me.
Richard
#49 by Triforcer on November 24th, 2008
Men wearing dresses in Asheron’s Call is wrong.
#50 by Anonyous on November 24th, 2008
Re: the wolvar quest, I would sooner have smacked down the walrus-people, who are in the incongruous position of believing they can invade the lands of others while also being ridiculously weak and incompetent, rather than the wolvar who are simply defending their homes and families. The walrus-people “slaughter the adult wolvar in front of their kids, but just kidnap the kids” quest, played out as some sort of humanitarian gesture, is flat-out deranged.
If Blizzard is going to force issues of morality on us, rather than having us fight enemies who are Evil-or-Insane, they should at least give us viable narrative paths (i.e. divergent quest trees) that allow us to choose between competing views. They sort of do this in the evolved-murloc-vs-wulvar conflict, and that’s a beginning. Hopefully they’ll expand on that concept in their future efforts. Or (as I mentioned above) avoid this sort of thing entirely, because they suck at it.