I wish this story would go away already. Richard Bartle is taking issue with a quest in World of WarCraft that depicts or implies torture. Am I insensitive or something? I simply don't get it. Who the hell cares if there's a %26quot;torture quest%26quot; in WoW? I don't.
Whenever these stories inevitably come up my feathers get ruffled. These are video games. They're not real. I don't see how the depiction of torture in video games raises red flags when you're blowing people up with fireballs. I couldn't care less for the reasoning either, it's just not important, it's even less important in an MMOG.
I don't play WoW, but when I did all I would do was groan as the quest text would fade in because I just wanted to hit accept and move on. I later found out you could disable that %26quot;feature%26quot;, but that tells you how much I care about the flavor text of quests in MMOGs. In all likelihood I would have done the 'torture quest' and moved on, having never batted and eyelash because I'd probably not even realize what was going on.
I don't pay attention, pretty much everyone I know doesn't pay attention. Some of you do, and maybe for some of you, like Bartle, it's an issue. I think it's much ado about nothing, most quest text is just an excuse to get you to kill some guy, deliver some message, pick some flowers, or save some tadpoles.
I think there is just a certain level of hypocrisy involved when one is bothered by something like torture being depicted in a video game. These games have you do much crazier things that couldn't even be political hot topics in real life.
I just don't know how people managed to detach themselves from what they are doing with their characters, spreading diseases as a Warlock, igniting people with Mages, stabbing vital organs with Rogues, and yet take issue with something like torture. Heck, killing people slowly with diseases as a Warlock could be considered torture, no?