Breakfast Topic: Terrible things

That made us think about all the stuff we do in-game that kind of makes us...well, bad guys, for lack of a better term, and we started wondering -- what's the worst thing that player characters have done (or been asked to do)? Setting Teron Gorefiend loose has to rank pretty high up there. Then there's that torture quest out in Borean Tundra, which squicks people to this day. While we're on the subject of Borean Tundra, nobody particularly liked thinking about a daily quest offered in Coldarra, or the ugly results of Horde questing in Howling Fjord. If you wanted to look at the whole "player evil" thing from a larger perspective, you can even make a case that player-generated PvP is, within the context of WoW's lore, one of the more significant contributions to faction antagonism and war.
So what's the worst thing that your character has done -- or, failing that, the thing that you still feel the worst about? I've already got my pick.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 9)
Punishment Feb 2nd 2010 8:17AM
Made a scene in the Grizzly Hills Outhouse and forgot to flush.
Tranq Feb 2nd 2010 9:09PM
Speaking of Grizzly Hills, not sure if there is a horde version of the quest but as alliance, you get sent to skin a horde captain for some humans (who turned out to be worgen) but luckily you get stopped before you actually do it. The first time I read the quest I felt sick :(
Akiiraz Feb 2nd 2010 8:18AM
I gotta say, killing Malygos actually ranks pretty high up there among them
I know he's trying to capture, transform and otherwise silence every single user of magic out there, but he apparently recovered from a madness brought upon by the destruction of his flight by Deathwing, i'm fairly sure he was still deluded at the time of EoE
and then we pop in, stack our engulfe in flames to 15 and watch him drop,
All alexstrasza really says is "I did what I had to, brother. You gave me no alternative."
i mean we just killed the freakin' aspect of magic, thats gotta have some bad repercussions somewhere
loop_not_defined Feb 2nd 2010 9:12AM
The aspects are merely guardians. As long as someone else takes up the helm, we'll be fine.
uncaringbear Feb 2nd 2010 10:46PM
Don't worry, Kalecgos will take over the Blue dragon flight and rebuild it to its former glory.
DrowVampyre Feb 2nd 2010 11:03PM
Y'know, if it weren't for his kidnapping, torture, rape, and brainwashing of Keristrasza (poor Keristrasza ;_;) I might feel bad about killing him.
As it stands, I want to resurrect him, kill him again slowly, and dance on his grave.
Tusker Feb 2nd 2010 8:16AM
The pirates in Howling Fjord ask you to kill Big Roy, the alpha bull seal on the ice floes. Then you're confronted with the Tuskarr, who depend on the seals for a living. The seals no longer reproduce.
"The Northsea Pirates slaughtered the isles' alpha sea lion bull, Big Roy. They made soap from him to clean the decks of their ships!
Now the sea lions won't mate."
So now you're reminded of the consequences of your actions: Not only are you driving the seals to extinction; you're committing genocide against the Tuskarr, the most likeable faction in Wrath, who depend on the seals for food.
And you're going to have to run a daily quest for the rest of your life to make up for it.
Makes you wonder what other genocides and atrocities you've committed against equally innocent people.
Sinnh Feb 2nd 2010 8:29AM
those questlines were a really nice way to wrap around the "actions have consequences" issue. obviously this breaks down in wow somewhat since you have no choice ever...if you want to continue questing, you have to do the quests, even the nitty gritty ones. i wonder if implementing something like Fable (a "pick your path" type thing, you can choose to do good quests or bad quests, to be evil or to be a hero) would be too hard to implement in wow. would certainly make the game much more interesting.
anyway, i always felt bad about the other daily for that group, where you're asked to kidnap the wolf pups. yeah, they tell you it's for the pups own good, but you have to kill their parents right before their eyes! i wanted my penguin pet, so i did it, but i didn't like them much after that...
loop_not_defined Feb 2nd 2010 9:16AM
...uuuh, genocide? Yeah, killing Big Roy was bad, and I don't mind making up for it to make things better, but I don't think doing him in could even remotely be considered "genocide" against Tuskarr.
Vladeon Feb 2nd 2010 10:26AM
Think about it like this, if there's a group of people in a remote area whose only source of water is a well in the middle of their town and all other sources of water are over 50 miles away with no modern vehicles and you poison their well on purpose. 2 weeks later, everyone's dead. Is that an act of genocide? I think that it's pretty easy to argue that it is. What's the difference between slowly killing an ethnic group of people and lining them up and shooting them? The result in the end is the same.
Jason Feb 2nd 2010 12:51PM
Err...yeah, the pirates did it!... *Shifty Eyes*
MightyBurebista Feb 2nd 2010 1:14PM
Reminds me of a Darkshore quest where you have to cull a mother bear in her den, but her cubs are right there. All they saw was ass and elbow as I couldn't tolerate hurting them in any way.
dyre42 Feb 2nd 2010 9:41PM
@Sinnh
"but you have to kill their parents right before their eyes!"
Not really, you can stun the den mother or freeze her and then scoop up the pups.
Rob Feb 2nd 2010 8:18AM
The DK quest which has you torture scarlet whatever guys. Pretty tedious quest too. Glad I got on the 10th try this time around.
Haro Feb 2nd 2010 9:04AM
That one actually felt good >_>
And i am the kind of guy who has problems playing "bad" on games, like kotor or black&white...
But damn, that kind of zealotry, they had it coming lol.
MightyBurebista Feb 2nd 2010 1:21PM
The Ebon Blade quest "From their corpses rise!" where you have to not only assassinate the Scarlet guys in the port, but RAISE THEM AS GHOULS. Basically, you're taking the same course of action as the Scourge, spreading the plague of undeath instead of just leaving them dead. Pretty much proved to me that Death Knights are still scum, Scourge or un-Scourge.
Frank Feb 2nd 2010 8:19AM
Kidnapping children for the Tuskar. I love the the Tuskar and I really hope that their motives are good but stealing kids from their partents and shoving them in sacks just seems wrong. I enjoy killing allaince so that can't be evil.
Moorit Feb 2nd 2010 8:56AM
Yeah, I ran across the puppy-stealing quest right after the Stolen Generations had been in the news a bunch, the Aboriginal children who were forcefully taken away from their parents and brought up "white." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generation I did it with my first toon but have avoided it with the others. I loved taking my wolvar orphan out there to play with one of those puppies later.
On a different note, as a child of the 90s and the Save the Whales era, I hated killing orcas in Borean Tundra. The game has pretty much made me insensitive to killing all sorts of sentient creatures, but nothing prepared me for killing whales!
Vladeon Feb 2nd 2010 9:02AM
And you know that they're just eating the pups anyway. I know because it takes forever to harvest those crabs in dragonblight because there aren't enough traps. I mean really who taught those guys how to harvest crabs? hey, here's an idea let's just wait for an adventurer to come by and pay him to get the crabs.
Gimmlette Feb 2nd 2010 9:41AM
^This
Of all the things I've had to do in the game, this was the one thing I really disliked. Torturing the guy in Borean, for me, wasn't bad because you don't see him suffer. Had there been some graphic with the torture I probably would have that seared into my brain but it felt like the myriad of other times we've had to go beat someone up to get information; what's his name in Menethil as an example.
But this, stealing children by killing their caregivers, made me quite upset. I did it the first time and I have never, ever done it since. If I fly in there to go fishing at the lake to the northwest of Moa'ki, I avoid killing the wolvar. I wasn't expecting to be that emotionally involved in a quest. I guess it's the whole stealing children aspect of the quest that really bothers me.