Bartle Responds To Critics

02 Dec 2008 at 11:33:51 by Andy Alderson

Richard Bartle has defended himself against the stream of criticism that followed his comments on Wrath of the Lich King last week.

As we reported, MUD co-creator Bartle slammed Blizzard for including a torture quest in the recent Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft. Many MMO fans judged Bartle’s reference to the Geneva Convention to be sensationalist and irrelevant prompting him to defend his comments on his blog.

“Hmm, my outburst on torture in WoW last week seems to have reached "life of its own" status,” says Bartle.

“It was picked up by Broken Toys, where (as usual) the discussion was generally sane. However, from there it went to blogs all over the place, with each extra step leading to further misunderstandings about what I was actually trying to say. Some of these were quite bizarre.”

He goes on to admit that his claim that the quest is necessary to reach the Nexus is incorrect but stands by the rest of his criticisms.

“I know WoW is not real life. I know the Geneva Convention doesn't apply there,” he states.

”No real-life laws apply there. Blizzard could put a quest to rape characters in there: real life anti-rape laws wouldn't apply. Nevertheless, a lot of people would be very disturbed by such a quest. Likewise, not everyone is OK with torture. This is the case in real life, too: yes, killing is worse than torture, but that doesn't mean that if you kill people then torture is fine. Evidence: the aforesaid Geneva Convention.”

However, despite this statement, later in the blog post he insists that he does not object to the torture quests on moral grounds.

“What's vaguely dispiriting about this is that I was basically making an obscure design point,” says Bartle.

“I wasn't making a moral point — I'd have blogged on Terra Nova for that."

Bartle attempts to clarify his objection by stating that his main problem with the quest is that it does not sit comfortably with the cartoon violence on offer in WoW.

"It's this last point — the breaking of the covenant between designer and player — that I was raising," he says.

"Either Blizzard didn't know torture would be problematical for some people, or they did know but didn't acknowledge it. Neither of these is satisfactory."

Read the rest of his comments (including the denial that he is “growing a vagina”) here.

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