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Boing Boing picked up on Richard Bartle’s posts 1 | 2 regarding a quest involving torture in World of Warcraft recently. In a quest to rescue a kidnapped mage leader, you torture a baddie until he gives up the mages’ location. You can read about the quest here.

Everyone is getting all frothy about this and i think there’s a bigger picture that many have missed in their discussions of this particular quest. To me, it sits inside of a game with a larger narrative. One could spend a lot of time delving into the lore of warcraft, and indeed, some people do. I’ll crudely summarise a bit to see if i can get my point across.

Bad things happened to a good guy and his people. He became obsessed with destroying the evil that had perpetrated that crime and continued to do increasingly bad things in order to exact his vengenance. Eventually, he doesn’t just become like the evil he hates, but he actually physically joins with it (ooh! magic).

Much of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is a rumination on this theme; how much bad can you do in the quest for good? Indeed, the particular quest referenced is only of many where you perform unsavory tasks in order to bring down the Lich King. I think that Blizzard is trying to get you to feel a little bit like Arthas in a quest for vengeance and justice. I suspect they are trying to make you think about things you have to do in order to achieve these ends. Do you have to become what you hate in order to destroy it?

Discussing that particular quest outside of the larger context of the expansion and its themes misses the point. I think disecting and condemning a single page from the rather epic story that is WoW, is perhaps a touch myopic.

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