This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Live
PTR
10.2.7
PTR
10.2.6
Beta
Death Knight moral issues?
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
amathalia
Let's see. An armed person covered in the blood of various critters enters your homestead. They start looking around - looking at
you
. Do you draw your weapon and attack first, or do you wait until they smack you on the head?
You
do
enter the homes of things and people and kill them; in the case of the alliance often in the name of doing good ("They're corrupted and aggressive because we blundered and crash landed on this island, kill them.").
And this process of random slaughter is so trivialised that you do not feel any qualms about it at all, about the idea of setting people on fire, breaking their bones, standing over their dying body as they attempt to struggle back to their feet and giving them one on the head time and time again.
How you can say "murder in cold blood 's ok, but if we're hurting them it isn't" more than puzzles me.
Yes, torture is horrible. The scene in question obviously depicts it in a bad light, makes sure the player understand that this is what he stands against, what he hates, what he does not want to do.
How you can consider that morally ambigious when you don't mind being paid and praised to cut a path of death, misery and destruction across Azeroth and the Outlands, I'm not sure.
Post by
Celdhyrean
It is. By putting it in a game, which is a form of entertainment, it passes along the message that torture is a light subject enough that it can be looked upon as part of the storyline of a show.You are basically saying that no game/entertainment of any kind should touch upon serious subjects. It might be your personal opinion but I'll have to completely disagree with it.
There are games for which i only look for mindless fun (to play them 5 minutes when i don't have much time) and some where i am looking for things that will make me immerse in other conditions and make me imagine, marvel, enjoy, sadden, ... ie where i will feel and think about stuff. These are games in which i want things to have a serious side, because i'm not going to have any emotional investment in them otherwise, ie they'll be mostly worthless.
That DK quest did it in a "tastefull" manner, ie it was not glorified or anything but simply part of a coherent setting, and as such i really appreciated it.
And while i don't want to attack the moral position of not wanting torture in one's games (it's one's own choice), coherency still bugs me. For example, you see violence all the time in WoW. Ganking (PvE or PvP), threatening (Nagrand demon base quests part in shttrath), killing, ... there are a lots of things like that i can't be bothered to list and am mostly certain you did do while playing. Torture is bad, but violence is okay ? Torture in video games is promoting it but violence in video games is not promoting it ?
Edit : lastly, if you really want to complain about a torture quest, complain about
that one
, which i already mentionned in this thread. It is much more disturbing as you have almost no implication in the issue and then suddenly are asked to torture someone because the quest giver "has a code of conduct".
Post by
166358
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
181717
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
167408
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mesoforte
It is. By putting it in a game, which is a form of entertainment, it passes along the message that torture is a light subject enough that it can be looked upon as part of the storyline of a show.
I tend to disagree with that. As I'm sure a real victim of torture would.
Those of us that didn't have to experience, directly or through loved ones, the horror of being on the weak side of it can't always appreciate fully how serious torture is.
How's a game different from a play or a movie? And who says the storyline will depict the death knights torture as "light"? From what I've read of the starting quests I'm relatively sure that they are making sure that the players know what they're doing is wrong, as in they're not taking this lightly. A game that reflects life needs to include the dark moments. Just because it does doesn't mean their normalizing it.
Thanks for the tip. If you consider my previous post disturbing or wrong, don't answer it. It is indeed that simple... ;P
Not disturbing or wrong, just not well-thought out.
Who says the kobold themselves weren't invading someone else's territory? Aren't the ones that attack anything in sight?
Wasn't in the scenario I gave, so this amounts to a red herring.
Also you seemed to skip a bit of important things.
Same goes for that guy in his homestead. If he knows he's in a war-torn zone, and decide to stay there for whatever reason, he will expect trouble. On top of that, if he wears armor and weapons, he sends the signal that he's ready to try and handle the expected trouble with violent means.
That the "agreement to a contest to the death" I was reffering to.
These people are living in the Plaguelands, a place constantly besieged by undead, including death knights. So, they should expect trouble from undead.
Post by
181989
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mesoforte
Games, certainly not.
Entertainement can sometimes reach through and still keep the context serious enough. Take "The Schindler's list" for example. Great movie and yet, the horrors referred to were in no way diminished.
They could breach the subject and keep it at it's place.
By definition, the content of a game is to be taken lightly. A game is not a medium to increase awareness, like a movie can be.
Not much of a gamer are you?
Start Ocean III
- horrors of war
Tales of the Abyss
- killing
Final Fantasy VII
- various degrees of mental disorder
Golden Sun- The Lost Age
- Xenophobia in the case of Lemuria
Games have already breached into serious issues and the designers do their best to explore them through that medium.
Warcraft also deals with issues such as racism, war, murder, killing and torturing of prisoners(forsaken quest), and probably others I'm forgetting.
http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=407
Post by
amathalia
A video game can have serious subject matter, WoW has certainly brought up quite a lot of it, although rarely handled appropriately.
Preparing for self-defense that you know is neccessary because many of your friends have been killed is not "agreeing to an armed conflict". That's an excuse made by aggressors the world over, and if you think that it is acceptable, you're not in a position to attack anyone else's moral integrity.
I know, RL example tearjerk, but I can't think of a good fictional one: An employee of my mother's family slept on their doorstep with a knife under his arm during riots, in order to keep her and the others safe. What you are essentially saying is that stabbing this man, who was squaring his shoulders to protect others when he had no obligation to do so except his sense of right and wrong and morality, would have been somehow less condemnable than stabbing one of the (unarmed) others.
Arming yourself in your home which you know is at danger of attacks does not equal aggression. There is no zone that is not war-torn in Azeroth. There is no safe place to live. You have a right to live in your home. Arming yourself simply means you are ready to defend yourself, nothing else. It does not mean you want to, it just means you know you may have to.
You're making excuses for the "murder in cold blood" (and it is nothing else) that the game "promotes" (trivialises, because that is how that world ticks, I'd say, and that's perfectly ok), but you get upset once the subject matter turns to something that makes you uncomfortable.
Which would be totally cool, if you didn't get out the "OH NO MORALS" hypocrisy stick to get rid of your discomfort instead of turning away.
Post by
116802
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Muratsuki
Death Knights start out under the Lich King's control, so of COURSE there's no choice in the matter! They have no free will! I don't see why people can't understand that sort of thing. Besides, it can be REALLY fun to play evil, and besides that, after getting out of the Lich King's control, all Death Knights become "good" guys. ("Good" in quotes because it's kind of relative for each person.)
Post by
166425
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
181989
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
176301
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
53090
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
183343
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
126515
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
54423
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
148719
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
158727
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.