Have you ever wondered why exactly you need to collect 8 random flowers or kill 10 gnolls/troggs/wolves/etc? Do you know why you killed Malygos? Or the guardians of ulduar? Or all those orcs in Hellfire Ramparts over and over again? Sometimes I wonder about these things. For Lich King content, since that is when I really started raiding and doing instances, I’m pretty aware why I’m killing most of the bosses I’ve been sent to dispatch. On the other hand, while leveling or questing, I pretty much take the quest and read just enough to glean what I’m supposed to be doing and start doing it. I have almost no idea why I’m in most of the pre-70 instances. Most players probably don’t care the reason they are questing, the ones who might care that they are out doing “good” assume that the quest givers, being friendly NPCs, are good and want the best for the world. This isn’t the case everytime. Sometimes, the results of the meddling of we adventurers can cause pretty disastrous things.
I really enjoy the faction pairs that let us choose which side we’re killing and which side we’re helping. In Sholazar Basin, we get to choose between the Frenzyheart Tribe and the Oracles. At first you do quests back and forth between the two and are eventually faced with choosing. Although some may like to get exalted with both (and I hear there is some way of doing that, not sure how), I like that we at least get a choice. Elsewhere in Northrend we get pitted by the Kalu-ak against local wolvar. As far as I know, there isn’t an option. You either help slay wolvar and generally mess up their business (including stealing their pups) or skip the quest area. Who says those Kalu’ak are the ones deserving our considerable services? You might have sided with a tribe of wolvar in sholazar and would like to be able to do the same here? No such luck my friends.
As I mentioned before, some of our deeds done through our relentless questing for knowledge, glory, and topping the meters can have dire consequences. There’s a series of low-level quests involving morrowgrain. *Minor spoils incoming*. I can’t recall if it is revealed in-game what these quests do, but through reading about the Stormrage novel, I learned these herbs we were gathering we being used to poison Malfurion (the leader of the Night Elf Druids, general bad-ass, and savior of the world). Yet we blindly chose to gather and turn in. What else might our actions have cost us? One theory is that it may have cost us…the entire world (of warcraft). *Sort of spoilers incoming*. The titans that shaped Azeroth into a world of life an order battled the Old Gods and although beat them, knew they were too integrated into the world to be removed without harming or destroying it. Cosmic beings of immense power knew better than to kill an Old God, but what did we do? We killed Yogg Saron in Ulduar. Yes it was a Monster that has spread is influence and corrupted people, creatures, and even the ground itself possibly all over Azeroth, but maybe it was also part of the fabric of that world. Maybe killing Yogg Saron destabilized Azeroth. Are all these events going on in-game now with elementals invading caused by Deathwing just preparing to come out. Or is Deathwing taking the opportunity caused by the after effects of our meddling?
So be it kidnapping Wolvar pups, gathering deadly herbs, or killing beings integral to Azeroths survival, us players, adventures, continue to press on with blind faith that we’re fighting the good fight. Or maybe it doesn’t matter cause, hey, at least we got the lootz.