Morality in GW

I was capturing some skills this weekend and it occurred to me that in RP terms, our characters are sociopaths. It's as if our characters are in the Sunspear sanctuary and say "Hey, there's a captain in the Arkjok Ward with a neat spell, let's bag him." Death isn't permanent for our characters, but it seems to be with the enemies.

Then there's the EotN mission, "Frog Stomp", where you help the Paragon, Hayda, massacre hekets -- five groups. I know everything resets in Guild Wars, so you'll encounter the same enemy the next time you play, but I hope in GW 2 there will be consequences for our actions. Maybe killing someone will have permanent effects.

Those hekets have families man. They're fathers, mothers, sons, daughters.

THink of the children... :/

Well, you might want to pay closer attention to what you're playing. Like, follow the storyline, and notice that in Kourna, our heroes are fighting a guerilla war against the Kourna army, occasionally fighting some Corsairs on the side. Slave taking, pirating corsairs, mind you (read the gold dubloon collectors texts).

Heket aren't very worked out, but constant inter-species warfare seems to be the norm in the world. Refugees fleeing Ascalon getting raided by centaurs, Ascalon being conquered from the Charr in the first place with the Charr taking it back during the invasion, etc. Seems most sides are nicely at war with each other, making sure there's lots of sapient orphans left to continue the grudges forever.

Now, you want immoral? How about murder with intent to steal (see Tihark Orchard mission if you don't resort to bribery) or killing allied non-human leaders (a quest involving Panaku in Shing Jea islands). Hunting endangered giants for their tusks (a quest for Mirza Veldrunner, you know, a centaur that's supposed to be quite attuned with nature...). And I'm sure there's more.

+1


OT though, its a game man, if you cant eaven pretend to kill pixles in a game, on your computer..just..wow.

If we dont kill them, they kill us.

I know, it's only a game; it doesn't keep me from enjoying Guild Wars. It will be interesting to see if GW 2 is more of the same, or an attempt at greater realism.

You're right! Next time, we'll find their families and kill them too!

Fixed that for you.

And we wonder why the other races of Tyria hate us...we run into their homes and kill them all.

If u haven't read anything about GW2 here it is; Guild Wars 2 will have dynamic events and there will be consequences based on if u fail them or if u complete them. For example, there may be a bandit attack on a town and the bandits kill alot of the citizens. The consequences for that is the shops they worked in will close, until another merchant comes to town to sell stuff. (According to what i've read and remember).

When it comes to TV or movies, there's a psychological mechanism at work called "suspension of disbelief." It's what lets you see Kevin Spacey play a crazy-guy-or-maybe-an-alien in Kpax on HBO tonight, and watch him playing a scarred teacher with a heart of gold in Pay it Forward tomorrow, and then see him playing Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects on Tuesday - and NOT think about the fact that you're watching Kevin Spacey, or that you just saw him die in SE7EN last night.

The same holds true in our games. We refer to our toons as "me" or "I" - "I totally facerolled Dhuum... I got drunk, cast Drunken Master so I could run fast, and hit him with my uber-sword-of-deathness."

Is it a commentary on your mental health that you refer to your toon in the first person and describe feats that are impossible in the real world? Or are you psychologically aware that it is, in fact, just a game... a fantasy realm without any of the actual consequences that make morality necessary to begin with?

You didn't kill the captain in AW and steal his skill. What you did was engage in an action that sent the appropriate 1's & 0's through the system which told the server to temporarily remove those pixels from your graphic display... and if you send other 1's & 0's through by zoning out and zoning back in, that same system is going to reassemble those pixels into a recognizable form for you to do it all over again.

Morality can best be defined as "that which works." It does not work for us as a society to run around killing each other... this is something we have agreed to as a society. Those who disagree are "immoral," by the definitions the majority have agreed upon. There is no such thing as an absolute with regards to morality beyond anything other than, "that which works" versus "that which does not work."

In the world of the game, killing the captain and capping his skill is "what works" based on the morality of that environment.

So the dragons in gw2 have all rights to destroy us.

They were very first in Tyria and we took their jobs and invaded their property.

sillythread

... you just ruined guild wars for me



now everytime i kill a charr i only imagine his children weeping over his dead body as his wife curses the people that did this to him

Sure, why not have 1000 players spawncamp a mob and kill it to farm the xp or whatnot.

Sorry. That wasn't my intent.

Well, if I'm off-base here, my apologies to everyone for this thread. Personally I enjoy GW and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

lol dont worry i was just kidding

nothing would ever ruin setting fire to charr for me

In EQ1 you gained factions with various races, which was both good and bad..

Bad because it could be a bit of grind to get in good standards with some races..

Good because is was heck of a fun to for example try become accepted/friend or even allied with normally sworn enemies It wouldn't work in GW1 really, but it could work in GW2. For example, killing Frogs would increase their hate, and doing quests/events for them would eventually get you some froggy friends.

I thought about the same thing when I read the novels. When a character dies there I'm thinking "What no res?" .
In the game you just stomp through everything without a single afterthought. There are only a few scripted events where NPC's truly die.
I always hated it how you couldn't prevent the death of Brechnar Ironhammer while you could just kill the one group of Mursaat coming at you.

Fable tried to throw morality into a fantasy game genre. all it accomplished was having players desire to be the ultra overlord of evil.

personally i wish we were able to attack and possibly kill certain NPC's in game just for fun. i would love to lock blades against Panaku, slap Kormir around for her stupidity, and even knock some sense into that jealous wench elementalist whose name has slipped my mind.

Maybe having a morality meter for a players toon could be interesting, but i'm quite sure it honestly wouldn't matter to most players considering when you break the game down to basics, its all about hack and slash.

i used to play a game that had "Ultimate Mode". in that mode, if your character died and you didnt bring a rez stone or werent rezzed by a party someone within 3 minutes, your toon was deleted. This actually made the game alot more fun for me, and i would love to see something like this implemented in more games.

They had a game in development (maybe it was an MMO) but it turned out to be too ambitious of a project for something like that so it never made it.

I wish Oblivion was more dynamic like that. Maybe Skyrim will be, heh.

The whole Norn Tournament thing my assassin was fighting these guys and going "Where the hell is that Bastard Panaku".
Wanted to show him up and instead he talks about a loss not being profitable.


Hey Anet for winds of change...let Panaku die, by my hands.
Talon Silverwing can watch.