Richard Bartle, author of the first MUD, is not cool with this quest in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King where you torture a guy.

Here’s how it goes: There’s a bunch of wizards hanging around the tundra. One of them has been captured, but they’ve captured one their antagonists in turn. You talk to the quest giver, and he says…

You see, the Kirin Tor code of conduct frowns upon our taking certain ‘extreme’ measures – even in desperate times such as these.

You, however, as an outsider, are not bound by such restrictions and could take any steps necessary in the retrieval of information.

Do what you must. We need to know where Lady Evanor is being held at once!

I’ll just busy myself organizing these shelves here. Oh, and here, perhaps you’ll find this old thing useful….

…and he hands you this thing, the description of which reads “Inflicts incredible pain to target, but does no permanent damage.” So, it’s a torture device.

First of all, Gandalf, I’d wager she’s being held in the floating magical prisons I passed on the way here. Maybe we should check ASAP instead of using the Star Trek agonizer on this guy in the chair.

Secondly, you’re a mage. I’ve seen you people turn the fabric of reality inside out just to conjure up a buffet table. You’re telling me the absolute cleverest thing you can think of to get the information is putting me on the receiving end of an extraordinary rendition? Did you fail Scrying 101 at mage college or something? Turn around from that bookshelf, go eff yourself and then do your own dirty work.

Even the Draenei had a better plan than this, and they’re space goats.

As you may have guessed, I wasn’t real enthused about this quest either. I actually flagged this during the beta with the comment “Paladins don’t torture.”

There’s a school of thought out there that Blizzard is going for some kind of “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster” message with the expansion, bolstered by the fact that the famous followup to that quote about staring into the abyss and having it stare back at you is printed on the inside flap of the box.

Plus, I’ve done way worse stuff in the expansion already. Starting out as a Death Knight, my first real job was to slaughter defenseless villagers, and I did it gleefully. So what’s the problem?

Well, it’s all in the presentation. The Death Knight intro stuff is supposed to be evil. That’s the whole point. There’s other questionable things your characters do up in Northrend, but they’re generally presented in terms of desperate measures under dire circumstances. These wizards are just sort of chilling out in their tower, flanked by enormous red dragons. They don’t look like they’re in much danger.

I’ve gone looking for dozens and dozens of missing people in WoW, and I’ve done just fine without having to use a Neural Needler on anyone tied up in a chair. That’s just the way this fantasy world works.

Having to torture this guy is less the Abyss staring back at me and more like an easier version of killing ten boars. Bartle feels pretty much the same way.

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.

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