Perhaps I missed doing this questline back in Cata, or I memory holed it. But I hated it.
Mind you, I was on my DK, so I really didn’t care about the Centaur’s lives. However, from a RL perspective it was a terrible situation to be in. I still can’t post links, but I’ll give you the name of the Gnome who gives you the quest: Crazzle Sprysprocket
You can go to any WoW fansite like wowhead to look it up. This is a questline for both Horde and Alliance and they go down the same path, without any ability to choose differently aside from simply not doing the quests.
We are tasked with trying to buy rights to the oil field in Splithoof Heights, where the Centaur of Thousand Needles have taken refuge from the flood waters. However, upon learning of how much gold the other faction is offering(after beating the snot out of the other faction’s representative and filching their documents), we attempt to use iron pyrite(fools gold) to outbid them. The Centaur chief notices it’s fake and tells his people to attack us. We then are tasked with killing Centaur and guarding an oil pump as we steal the oil.
This isn’t the only time we end up doing something nasty in a quest, but it was the most recent and it got me thinking about story direction and quest possibilities.
Choice. We don’t often get one. If I had had my way I would have bopped that damned Gnome on the head and told him we’d find another way to gain access to the oil. But, as in Skyrim and the Paarthunax quest, we don’t have an option other than to ignore the quest. And that is no bueno. I never want to have quests like this in the game again, where you are railroaded into doing terrible things in order to complete the quest.
I was fine with gunning down Orc soldiers swimming to shore in Pandaria, and I would have been fine with wiping the Centaur off the map given proper justification. But don’t have me act out the part of an incompetent liar. I can be harsh, I can be hostile, I can be unforgiving. But I’m not incompetent and I’m not a deceiver. Blizzard should strive to give players more choice and options when it comes to our story. Not the illusion of choice, but actual agency.
That’s my rant for the day. I know it is exceedingly unlikely to ever be something that is implemented.
Edit: Reading back over this I realized I might have smooshed a complaint a little too closely with another. I hate the questline on its own merits, but I hate it WAY more due to lack of agency. A quest like this could actually be thought provoking, result in introspection over your choices, etc, IF there were any choices.
