Comments on: What moral value does WoW have?

By: A Gnome of loose morals « Armaggedon’s coming

A Gnome of loose morals « Armaggedon’s coming — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:01:21 +0000

[...] OK, OK.. I was banging on about the horrendous immoral quests in WoLK the other day, but I fear that Euripedes infiltrated my psyche, cause this week I found [...]

By: Ialk

Ialk — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:52:27 +0000

Ignoring the rest, Druids aren’t supposed to be walking, talking, protectors of the cute fluffy bunnies.

People forget about Nature, red in tooth and claw. Balance isn’t about no one killing the cute and fuzzy creatures, it’s also about keeping the cute and fuzzy creatures in balance, even if that means killing some of them.

-Ialk

By: moomajick

moomajick — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:16:19 +0000

I personally like the quest in Sholazaar Basin where you summon a spirit to find out about killing its kind. Then it begs you to leave its species alone, you ignore it, and continue killing things.

All this for Hemet Nesingwary, whose agents you spent plenty of time killing in Borean Tundra trying to save the same creatures you are slaughtering in Sholazaar Basin…

The whole thing makes your head spin.

By: Devv

Devv — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:14:53 +0000

Fortuantely, I’m not real big on lore. OK, that statement is a little inaccurate. I’m not real big on reading. With that said, I’ve only ever read about 5% of all of the text in the game. Half of the time, I don’t even know why I’m doing what I’m doing. Getting too involved in the storyline actually takes away from the experience for me. To completely wrap my head around the lore would be to openly admit that I’m a bigtime nerd. And like I said to begin with, I hate reading. So these “moral questions” never really trouble me. Ignorance is bliss.

By: AltoholicsAreUs

AltoholicsAreUs — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:37:08 +0000

I read in an article before WotLK was released that Chris Metzen said the idea behind the “morally oogy” quest lines, and the instance the culling of strat, were to put you in Arthas’ shoes. He said he the idea behind it all was that once you reach the head man himself, you’ll have made a lot of the same choices he did, and will you still hate him so much? Or will you side with him, having seen the difficulties of his choices.

The article was in a PCGamer magazine, sometime midway last year. Hope that helps.

By: Morality vs. Duty « Majickly Moo- The not quite WoW blog of a Cynical Tree and Crossdressed Mage.

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:07:50 +0000

[...] inevitable that you will have come across several posts lately regarding some Northrend quests. Gnomeageddon, Bigbearbutt, Critical QQ, and more have remarked on the quests in Northrend that are rather [...]

By: Arioch

Arioch — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:48:09 +0000

I think the addition of moral ambiguity to the quest lines in WotLK was done to heighten the emphasis that this could very well be the end of the world. If Arthas wins, we lose EVERYTHING. You, your friends, your family, everything will become subject to the Scourge and cease to exist as you know it. Think you would have many moral dilemmas as a mindless, rotting zombie? This is a win-at-all-cost effort and your hands will get dirty.

Current politics or government using games to re-program our moral compass ideas aside, the target audience for gaming is maturing and eventually we get bored of the grind for the XP when it’s constructed in repeatable patterns of kill X number of Y and bring me .

Developers spend many hours designing these quests; I hope they know that people are now actually reading them instead of blindly hitting accept.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to bake some cupcakes to bring with me while I find someone to torture.

By: vlad

*vlad* — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:17:26 +0000

@pewpewlazers: You don’t have to kill any Wolvars doing that daily quest. Just run in, grab the kids, and run out again – no creatures killed.

The morality of most quests is dubious; why blindly follow the instructions of someone you have never seen before, simply because they have a ‘!’ over their head?

The consequences of our actions in completing these quests are never a problem, though:-
the baby Wolvars simply disappear, they don’t really end up in a pen somewhere. You can’t go and visit them to make sure they are being treated well, because they don’t exist.
How can you be concerned for the welfare of creatures that vanish as soon as you pick them up?

By: Brajana

Brajana — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:49:33 +0000

Yes, some of the quests in WotLK actually make you think and feel things. But I see this as a good thing. Doing quests in Vanilla or BC, most of them weren’t very interesting. I hardly ever found a questline that had a good story or motivation behind it. It was all:

“Go kill the bad guys, and I will give you a reward.”

Whoopee.

But now, there are fuzzy lines. WHO are the bad guys? Where does your character draw the line? What is your character’s alignment? It kind of forces a little of the RP of the MMORPG on you to make decisions like this. Gets you more involved in the quest and feel like you’re a part of the story, rather than just some little minion going around killing beasties.

It’s like movies… how many people would watch movies if all of them were good guys killing bad guys and winning? Boooring!

By: gnomeaggedon

gnomeaggedon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:37:43 +0000

Ohh they are the ones that go missing… and some suggest are filling cook pots?