Player Succeeds at World of Warcraft Non-violently

Player Succeeds at World of Warcraft Non-violently

January 10, 2008
Can you make it to level 70 in WoW without killing anything?

WoW Insider reports on a player who does just that.

Noor, a gnome rogue and Reinisch, an undead priest, both on the Maiv server, never kill anything intentionally. The unnamed player behind both avatars describes himself as a 50-year-old computer programmer and says he is also the webmaster for Firesign Theater comedy troupe (GP: one of our faves, back in the day).

He told WoW Insider:
I had thought about doing such a [pacifist] character off and on for a while... Both my priest and my rogue try not to hit anything, although there's always a chance of a misclick when trying to open a quest item with mobs fighting near it. Both of them always wield a fishing rod, so any accidental hits won't increase their weapon skills. Neither of them will do quests where they have to kill things.

I started [my undead priest] from a roleplaying point of view, based very loosely on a real German priest, Franz Reinisch, who refused to serve in Hitler's army and was executed... As a rogue is a sort of "spy" class, I Googled for a pacifist spy and found Noor Inayat Khan, a woman who was also executed by the Nazis for aiding the French resistance, so I named my rogue after her. She was the daughter of a well-known pacifist in India.

GP: For those familiar with World of Warcraft, WoW Insider has much more on the mechanics of how the pacifist characters are played.

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Commendable.
Must have taken from real restraint.

And I take it that's an RP server, as if it wasn't he would have been dying constantly.
I'm 23 years old and I absolutely love Firesign Theatre. Nick Danger ftw! If anyone would try to totally undermine the basic rules for a game, it'd be a Firesign fan. That stuff was crazier than Monty Python at times.
@Kurisu7885
It could very well be a PVE server, not necessarily a RP.
I salute this attempt.

Doubly funny if the dude has the gall to name his sprite "Kira Yamato"

...Gundam in-joke there...
@Rdeegvainl

I know. I'm just saying on a PVP server word would travel fast about a guy who doesn't fight back.
A very cool idea which would be quite a challenge.

I wonder if he allowed himself to group with other characters that were killing creatures? I would assume not.
very,very impressive. i wonder how long it took?
Kudo's the the player!
Vacavriach,

No, he doesn't allow other players to get XP for him. It's in the WowInsider article.
So... He only completed quests that required no fighting? Is there that many to the point where he can get to level 70? Maybe repeatable quests.

This guy has reached a new level of "No life". If it takes that long to reach 70 by killing things it probably takes twice as long to do it without killing anything.

lol @ his armor though if that's him at level 70. I had those shoulders on my 35 shaman.
@Geno - You are saying he has "no life," yet you are critiquing his equipment and ignoring his historical references? Pot vs Kettle
@GameDevMich

I was just saying that it must of taken a long time to do that.
He's not level 70, the GP article is wrong. He's level 26 on one character, and 16 on the other.
@Jim

That's pretty easy actually. I can't imagine trying to get past 40 without ever killing anything. I had to run SM Cath about 30 times to get from 30-35
Thanks guys. I just broke my addiction to WoW and now I'm wanting to play again.

I've been sobre for 2 months now.
You know, it's not really pacifism if you're still helping others kill shit. Just sayin'.
@ Zorak,

I agree. Even if killing pixels is not exactly murder, it does defeat the point.

It would have been funnier (and more peaceful) if he had only done something like abusing of the ingame market to get big bucks and buying a good gear of it.
@ the honoured Anonymous

You mean like making a deal with the Goldfarmers?
"succeeds" is a bit of an exaggeration. He has two very low level (the kind of level one reaches in an evening or two when playing "normal mode") characters that are, by all accounts, stuck there for quite some time. If that's success, my six year old niece succeeded at WoW as well, on her third day of playing.
I think I would have found it quite annoying.. lol - but then it's cool he was able to accomplish his goal.

Although I must admit, I've gotten a bit bored of WoW already, myself.
ummm. there is no maiv serer. there is a maiev server, and it`s pvp. grats to these people.
DOCW, you are, too, able to use The Armory. Here's Noor's profile: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Maiev&n=Noor

This is, btw, my biggest beef. RP is, for better or worse, a "make believe" world in which people can be as ... out there ... as they want to be. This player chose real world heroes' names who did what they did to protect others, even if it meant their death. Death. Not a corpse run, logging out, coming back tomorrow.

If he doesn't want to fight because it's a fun little twist to the game, that's cool. But to borrow the names of Nazi resistance members to justify and embellish it, is bad. To them it wasn't a fun little twist to a game. It was death. One doesn't respect their sacrifices by paying $15 a month and playing a game in some, by all means, unnatural and unintended way.
It's commendable, sure, but it really detracts from the essence of the game. You'll miss out on quite a lot if you simply refuse to kill anything at all in-game....you certainly won't get very good gear. And seeing as how killing NPCs/players (raids, PvP) is 85% of the game, its probably quite less exciting. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
I've never played WoW, but I find this insanely interesting!
I think it's an interesting experiment, especially in game design - what happens when a player decides not to play the way you intend? Moreover, maybe there needs to be more games that don't involve injuring or killing other intelligent beings that are just as compelling and interesting as the video games that do make it an essential part of their gameplay. More diversity of playstyle can only be a good thing, right?
How about pacifism in Starcraft 2...
This idea has occurred to me, but I knew I'd never have the patience to pull it off. By the way, if you read the WoW Insider article, you'll see that the same guy also has a 70 mage and 70 warlock that he plays normally. He pretty much knows the game inside and out and wanted to put his own spin on it. Let people have fun the way they want, I think it's creative.
*Southpark end game Guitar Hero announcer voice*

Congratulations, you made it to lvl70 on WoW w/o killing! YOU ARE A FAG!
[...] I’m just catching up on reading and found a great piece at Gamepolitics about a World of Warcraft player who reached the highest level in the game as a pacifist, never intentionally attacking or killing another player. He found real-life examples of pacifism that related to his character class and based his role-playing and character names after them: Franz Reinisch (link in German) and Noor Inayat Kahn. [...]
I'm pretty annoyed by how my rogue is performing in PVP.

I can't kill shit with the rogue - so much for high DPS. You can't really have really high DPS if things started to run around and worse of all drop a fear bomb and that's it!

:( i'm a lvl 70 rogues in nagrand.. with epic gladiator set
Re: Player Succeeds at World of Warcraft Non-violently

Unlike previous games in the Warcraft series, World of Warcraft is a MMORPG, not a real-time strategy game. There are some similarities with previous games in the series, including the use of the same setting of the world of Azeroth as well as following a similar art direction.arizona pool builder

ECA IconA PUBLICATION OF THE ECA RSS IconSUBSCRIBE User LoginLOGIN / REGISTER

Crispy Gamer




       

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 09/05/10 at 07:55pm
Cheater87: Canadian Defence Minister mad about MOH.
Posted 09/05/10 at 04:01pm
BearDogg-X: Adding to PHX Corp's link to the Salt Lake Tribune's opinion piece, it was written by Christopher Ferguson and it also urges Utah AG Mark Shurtleff to sign an amicus brief opposing California.
Posted 09/04/10 at 11:55pm
C. Aaron Browbowski Jr.: no way they euthanized a sick whale with c4, thats like the obama healthcare plan for the world, no i'm just kidding, let him bankrupt america :D
Posted 09/04/10 at 10:30pm
PHX Corp: PSA: The ECA forums(and GP website) are Not a Ad Toilet, plz do not Drop your Pants and poop out an ad on it(I'm going to end up Getting in trouble for a Toilet Joke)
Posted 09/04/10 at 03:26pm
JDKJ: Does anyone recall exactly when Zippy came down out of the trees and mastered bi-pedalism?
Posted 09/04/10 at 11:41am
PHX Corp: Attempt to revive video game law a waste of money opinion on salt lake tribune
Posted 09/03/10 at 04:31pm
Andrew Eisen: While a desire to conserve a particular marine ecosystem is a laudable goal, securing a 31-foot whale in the middle of it with a 10-ton anchor is probably not the best way to go about it.
Posted 09/03/10 at 04:01pm
ZippyDSMlee: Was thinking more of feedig dieing reefs ,ps life is suffering
Posted 09/03/10 at 03:35pm
Andrew Eisen: Number three, explosives are a hell of a lot cheaper, logistically feasible and humane then drowning a sick whale with a 10-ton anchor.
Posted 09/03/10 at 03:25pm
Andrew Eisen: Unbelievable. Number one, reefs are in shallow water. Number two, they blew the damn thing up because they couldn't drag it into the water.
Posted 09/03/10 at 03:13pm
ZippyDSMlee: Thats a waste of explosives drag it out to deep off to a reef and put a 10 ton anchor on it, here fishies feeding time!.
Posted 09/03/10 at 02:21pm
PHX Corp: @EZK They took it from what Oregon did to a whale 30-40 yrs ago
Posted 09/03/10 at 11:07am
Andrew Eisen: ...and dozens of stray cats come running from all directions.
Posted 09/03/10 at 11:04am
Andrew Eisen: Hey, if it's too big to shoot, what recourse do we have but to blow it up?
Posted 09/03/10 at 11:01am
E. Zachary Knight: Did they get the idea from the SImpsons?
Posted 09/03/10 at 10:55am
Andrew Eisen: Australia: Sick whale euthanized with explosives. No kidding. Video included.
Posted 09/02/10 at 04:19pm
Andrew Eisen: Seems so. Hence my lack of surprise.
Posted 09/02/10 at 04:14pm
E. Zachary Knight: AE: But isn't that what it normally takes for people in power to make stupid decisions?
Posted 09/02/10 at 04:12pm
Andrew Eisen: Sadly, but not surprisingly, it sounds like the decision was based on nothing more than “I heard on the internet you can play as the Taliban.”
Posted 09/02/10 at 04:09pm
Andrew Eisen: I take it the service folk are unable to decide for themselves whether MOH is something they want to purchase and play. Good thing there's someone to make such tough decisions for them.
Login or register to post shouts