Pet the Wolves!

If you happen to read my blog with any regularity (and I apologize if you do), you may remember that a couple months ago, I announced I had grown tired of WoW and was going to stop playing.

Well, I’m back.

Basically, I was bored and needed something to play. FreeCell, as much as I love it, was not doing it for me. So, I dusted off my Blood Elf Paladin and hit the road with a vengeance. Well, as much vengeance as a Protection Pally can (Fights take forever, as I don’t do much damage, but on the plus side, I’m nigh unkillable).

So, in my travels through the lands of Azeroth, I came upon a wounded Tauren warrior who asked me to aid him. I obviously said ‘yes,’ as I’m a virtuous paladin (and I needed the xp). He then spun a tale about diseased wolves and asked me to murder a bunch of them in order to ‘help’ them.

Which brings me to the subject of the blog: Why is it that whenever ‘nature is out of balance’ or ‘the wildlife is stricken with some disease’ the answer is to slaughter double-digits worth of animals?

“The animals of this region have been infected with a terrible disease! Please, oh mighty adventurer, help us heal the land!”

“Of course! Would you like me to deliver medicine, inoculate some of the animals, or even hunt down those responsible?”

“Ummmm, no. Just go kill 20 Limping Wolves, 10 Suspicious Badgers, 7 Myopic Snakes, and 27 Enraged Meerkats.”

“. . . . why?”

“’Cause I asked you too?”

“But will that actually solve the problem?”

“Well, no.”

“Are you even a Druid?”

“I took a correspondence course. Plus, I really, really hate animals.”

I realize that ‘kill X of Y’ is an easy quest and it works wonderfully in terms of an MMO. However, I would really like to see a quest where I got to be nice to the wildlife (as vicious as it is). I want a quest where I need to deliver picnic baskets to bears or ‘Pet 20 Wolves’ rather than just maiming and killing them all the time. It would, at least, be a nice change of pace.

Granted, in return I’d like them to stop attacking me all the time, but there you go.

Cheers,
-Jason