The Uncomfortable Nature of Messy Reality

There is a questline at Hellfire Peninsula in TBC Classic that I dislike.

Of all the quests in TBC Classic, this is the one that I actively avoid. 

No, not because it raises questions about temptation and consequences, or the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or even an obnoxious number of Kill Ten Rats, but because it reminds me too much of real life. I would wish that it was about our better angels, but it isn't, and because of that I have a hard time dealing with the questline.

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If you're like me, you've seen about all of the original Star Trek episodes over the years. And if you're also like me, you've probably also read the short stories that James Blish made of the original episodes, because you simply couldn't get enough of the stories. While there are some episodes that hit you right in the gut, such as City on the Edge of Forever or Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the episode A Private Little War has resonated in my psyche over the years. 

Yes, some tropes were pretty stereotypical,
but the Original Series did make you think.
From memory-alpha.fandom.com.

 

The story unfolds when Kirk visits a Stone Age era society he once studied years ago. The person he'd once confided while he was an undercover observer in has now become chieftain, and as the story continues it is discovered that the Klingons are arming the competing tribe with flintlock rifles. The chieftain's wife observed Kirk and McCoy using their phasers, and decides to steal Kirk's and use it to get one up on the competing tribe. Things do not go well, and the chieftain's wife is killed. In the end, an arms race ensues, with Kirk's friend asking for flintlock rifles of their own to match those that the Klingons had been providing. Or as Kirk puts it, "Serpents, serpents for the Garden of Eden."

Even the best of intentions can oft fall astray, and no matter how much one tries, sometimes you just can't win.

If my observation of that episode sounds somewhat familiar, then you too may have come across the storyline that begins with the quest entitled 'Sedai'. 

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Sedai's questline begins with Sedai's Draenei brother being concerned about him, as he'd gone to the Maghar Orcs seeking peace and hadn't returned. You investigate and discover a dead Draenei near the paths leading to the Maghar encampment. He'd been struck and killed from behind.

Returning to the Temple of Telhamat with the bad news, one of the Broken who'd befriended Sedai decides an eye-for-an-eye is good enough for him, and he sends you into the Maghar encampment to slaughter the Orcs. When you return, Sedai's brother is horrified at what you'd done, insisting that "This is not our way!" He then sends you out with a device to see if you can find the truth of the matter. 

With the device, you are able to see what happened: Sedai had gone to the Orcs, and they'd rejected him and escorted him out of their encampment, telling him to not come back. The Maghar have naturally been suspicious of outsiders, especially since so many of their brethren had fallen under the sway of the Burning Legion. Sedai turns to leave, and witnesses that the Orcs have been jumped by Fel Orcs. Sedai looks like he's about to help defend the Maghar when he is cut down by a Fel Orc assassin from behind.

The true villain in all of this are the Fel Orcs, who turned the Draenei/Broken and the Maghar Orcs against each other, but the thing is, like as in A Private Little War, there's nothing you can do. The two sides are willing to believe the worst in each other, and that suspicion makes them both ripe for manipulation by Illidan's forces. 

And that's what I hate about this questline: you know and can see how easily manipulated the two sides are, but like in reality, there's nothing you can do about it. Most of us don't have a pulpit to try to get people to see the other side in reality, so all we can do is watch the unfolding nature of events and feel helpless to do anything.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and the first decade of adulthood was in the 90s, so I got to see this messy reality in spades, with The Troubles being my most obvious example of this problem. Everybody knew that the true villain in the conflict in Northern Ireland was the lack of trust in each side, which extremists on both ends used to keep the conflict going. It was only when enough people --the common people who were the victims in the undeclared war-- finally said "Enough!" that real progress was finally made. 

I can love and respect what Blizz did with that questline, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I hate how it reflects on our own reality, where people can't see beyond sharp divides of black and white to finally meet somewhere in the middle, and how it reflects on me as well. No amount of gear or gold or whatever can change my mind on this, because all it does is sadden me at who we are and what we have become.

EtA: Fixed the flow of the Star Trek portion.