Richard Bartle Angered By Lich King

25 Nov 2008 at 11:24:31 by Andy Alderson

Richard Bartle has criticised Blizzard for condoning torture in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

The MMO pioneer, co-creator of the first multi-user dungeon MUD, objects to the Art of Persuasion quest in which the player is required to obtain information from a prisoner.

"Basically, you have to take some kind of cow poke and zap a prisoner until he talks. I'm not at all happy with this," wrote Bartle in his blog.

"I was expecting for there to be some way to tell the guy who gave you the quest that no, actually I don't want to torture a prisoner, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that. Worse, the quest is part of a chain you need to complete to gain access to the Nexus, which is the first instance you encounter (if you start on the west of the continent, as I did). So, either you play along and zap the guy, or you don't get to go to the Nexus"

"Unless there's some kind of awful consequence further down the line, it would seem that Blizzard's designers are OK with breaking the Geneva convention," he added.

"Well they may be, but I'm not."

We're currently awaiting a response from Blizzard so stay tuned.

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