Instances of player characters accidentally making things worse in World of Warcraft.
- The final boss of the World of Warcraft dungeon "the Blood Furnace" is overseeing the efforts of the dungeon's fel orc residents to keep a powerful demon lord confined so they can suck his blood away. He attacks you, yelling that you're "ruining everything." When you kill him, his last words are: "Good luck... you'll need it." (Luckily, the demon is in his own separate instance beneath the floor grating.)
- Also in Shadowmoon Valley — the quest chain that leads to the resurrection of Teron Gorefiend. Whups!
- Also the Shadow Labyrinths — the cult you just killed there was fending off a Cosmic Horror (Murmur). Although, this time, you get a chance to kill it right then.
- The entire Hakkar questline, starting in Tanaris and leading you around the world thrice and through three instances, has you resurrecting the blood god, revitalizing the evil troll empire, and finally re-defeating him with a raid.
- The first campaign in Warcraft III's expansion set is even worse. The player takes control of a group of night elves on their quest to stop Illidan from using a powerful evil-looking artifact. It's only after you stop him and destroy the artifact that you find out he was trying to destroy the Lich King who controlled the undead.
- Except that, as revealed in Wrath of the Lich King, merely killing the Lich King WOULDN'T end the undead threat once and for all; in fact, Ner'zhul was holding the undead in check, and his death would have made the undead an even greater threat.
- Admittedly, Illidan's plan was to destroy Northrend in the process, an equal example of the hero breaking it.
- To make Illidan's actions seem even less heroic, he was doing them at the behest of a greater evil, and destroying Northrend would have seen to the entire planet splitting open. Not as heroic as a lot of people initially think.
- Illidan's dialog seems to indicate that he wasn't aware of the full damage the spell would cause. Illidan has a history of not thinking things through.
- This far and nobody's brought up the best gem in the gameworld? "Upon further analysis of the Gnomeregan situation, it would appear as though we not only failed to eradicate the troggs but we also happened to turn most of the gnomish race into horrific, mindless, evil-doing leper gnomes..."
- Drakuru plays you for a chump while locked in a cage, using you to take down the Drakkari Empire and clear out their stronghold.
- Whereupon Drakuru calls up The Lich King to inform him of your success at restoring him to the place of power in Drak'Tharon, which in turn inspires the Lich King to transform Drakuru into one of the most powerful Death Knights in the scourge army. Hey, at least then he offers you a job as a reward for your help instead of killing you outright.
- Apparently when we killed C'thun, we risked destroying the planet because the Old Gods tied their existence to the survival of Azeroth. And now we're going after another one, fully aware of this possibility.
- Well Arthas, it seems trading your soul for power to get revenge and save your kingdom turned out to be less of an awesome idea than it seemed. Made even worse with chain retcons which made any success he did do void (Dreadlords die when their souls are destroyed, Frostmourne did just that).
- Warcraft really likes this one. This one depends on whose side you think is the hero and who is the villain, but Daelin Proudmoore declaring war on the Horde? Not a great idea. Not only did you get yourself killed, you pissed off the Horde, and when they killed you that pissed off the Alliance because you were a war hero. Oddly enough, the leader most affected (his daughter) actually helped take him down and is still the one most devoted to peace.
- This happens similarly with the Alliance attack on Camp Taurajo. General Hawthorne attacked and sacked the Tauren village, a "soft" target that had value for the war effort. Whilst Hawthorne intended to spare the civilian, he did many counterintuitive measures including using murderous criminals from Alliance prisons as soldiers, attacking only when all military personnel had left(meaning civilians were the only one left in the camp) and having the camp firebombed by dwarves mercenaries. And whilst Hawthorne did leave an opening for Taurajo's civilians to run to, it led directly into a camp of murderous Quilboar. Not surprisingly Hawthorne's incompetence led to a lot of civilian deaths and heated up the Alliance/Horde war, leading to Hawthorne himself being assassinated
- By killing the corrupted Watcher Loken in the Halls of Lightning, the players accidentally set in motion a process to get the Titans to destroy and rebuild Azeroth. Oops.
- And that's after you helped him imprison his uncorrupted brother, thinking all along that you were helping the brother.
- In a It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time moment, in one quest chain in Burning Crusade, the players help Orcish leader Garrosh Hellscream get over his depression and grow to become a leader. And, in the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King', he's a bloodthirsty maniac who's trying to restart the war with the Alliance and might be out to replace the Orcish Warchief, Thrall. And he's only in the position to do this because of the players' intervention.
- As of Cataclysm, Thrall has been forced into stepping down as Warchief in order to commit himself fully to finding a way to keep Deathwing from wiping out Azeroth. No prizes for guessing who filled his position.
- In the fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Garrosh goes mad with power and become the expansion's Big Bad.
- There are a number of quest lines that operate on this trope. Probably one of the earliest ones encountered belongs to the Night Elves. In your first few levels you encounter a satyr who just wants you to go kill a few animals and bring him back some of their bits and parts. After completing this quest, you get another quest after it's explained that you really kinda probably shouldn'ta done that because that satyr is really up to no good. So you wind up turning him into a frog. It's a very short quest line and isn't terribly fleshed out, but sets up a pattern for you being tricked into actions that result in rather negative consequences throughout the game. You just never learn, do you, Hero.
- Good old hermit Abercrombie from a certain Duskwood quest chain. While it seems you're just doing simple favors for a kindly old man, you eventually find out you've helped him build a Level 35 Elite abomination named "Stitches" who runs along the main road towards Darkshire killing any low-level players in his path. Do the same quest with another character, making sure to read the quest text this time, and you'll see how obvious this outcome was.
- The Horde quests in Tirisfal Glades and Hillsbrad revolve around making a plague supposedly to use against the Undead Scourge. It is later revealed in Northrend that this was not the case as the plague was unleashed on the living as well at Angrathar: The Wrath Gate.
- In addition, a quest in Stonard has you putting together ingredients for a truth serum crafted by one of the Forsaken Apothecaries who's making this New Plague, so you can get information out of a captured human. Turns out the human wanted to give the orcs and other Horde leadership information on the Apothecaries' plan to create a new plague... and the truth serum you just fed him was actually just poison. Oops.
- An early Dragonblight quest chain has you attacking outposts of the Blue Dragonflight, beating up their human sympathizers one by one and trying to figure out what they're doing with the local magical ley lines. On the body of one of their leaders (which one it is depends on your faction) you find a half-finished letter revealing that they in particular were threatened into slavery with their family's lives on the line, and that they were actually working to sabotage the operation — leading to an implicit assumption that at least a sizable portion of the task force in general could be doing the same.
- The entire Wrath of the Lich King expansion is leading up to a massive, epic battle against the Lich King. When your raid group finally reaches the top of Icecrown Citadel and takes the Lich King down to 10% of his health, he instantly kills you all and claims the whole Argent Tournament and Icecrown Citadel instance was exactly what the Lich King wanted — pitting the strongest champions of Azeroth against one another and Arthas's strongest subordinates, so that only the cream of the fighting crop would come to face him in battle... so he can kill them all and raise them to be his new Scourge commanders. However, just when you think all is lost, Tirion Fordring breaks free of the ice block he's imprisoned in and shatters Frostmourne with the Ashbringer, releasing the contained souls, one of whom resurrects the raid, allowing you to finish off the Lich King. It turns around twice more, though, in the ending cutscene, when Terenas Menethil confirms what Uther said in the Halls of Reflection: Arthas's death means the Scourge will rampage out of control and cause even more of a threat to the living. But that too is averted when first Tirion, then finally Bolvar Fordragon resolve to make the Heroic Sacrifice of becoming the Lich King themselves to be the "jailor of the damned". And Bolvar even looks a bit like Tal Rasha.
- This trope comes into play in the quest chain that opens the Molten Front, although you're an Unwitting Instigator of Doom instead of an Unwitting Pawn. Shortly before the attack begins, Hamuul asks you to investigate a Druid of the Flame nearby. The druid, Leyara, binds you with roots and badly burns Hamuul, forcing you to delay the attack until you have enough Marks of the World Tree.
- For ten thousand years, Pandaria has been at peace save for the cyclical war against the mantid swarms. In Mists of Pandaria, the Horde and Alliance proceed to unleash the Sha and trigger at least five wars across the continent in the process. All without leaving the first area.
- Though the faction wars are pretty bad, the releasing the Sha part is more ambiguous, as it is implied in game that the actions of Emperor Shaohao to save Pandaria from the Sundering, specifically the part about purging himself of negative emotions via masks that create Anthropomorphic Personifications of them and then bury them in various places of Pandaria, are what created/released the Sha by tapping into the power of the Old God buried beneath Pandaria. Nice Job Breaking It, Crystal Dragon Buddha. Also, one of the dialogs with one of the celestials indicates he seems to think it is better that it had happened now, since the rise of the Sha was inevitable due to their nature, but now they have the help of the playable races to fight the Sha:Chi-Ji: It seems the time has finally come to face the consequences of Shaohao's actions. This conflict has been a long time coming — the arrival of your people was merely a catalyst. Now, your help will be necessary if Pandaria is to survive.
- In Cataclysm, the player character comes across a troll skull. With the help of an NPC, you bring said troll back to life. Said troll is Bloodlord Mandokir.
- When a few Sunreavers broke their neutrality and aided the Horde in a black op, Jaina went into a fury and imprisoned or killed every Sunreaver in Dalaran. Varian calls her out on this as it ruined his plans to sway the Blood Elves to his side.
- Khadgar is determined to avert this trope in Warlords of Draenor. Early in the Draenor storyline, the player releases Gul'dan, the Man Behind the Man who was a direct cause of the events of the original Warcraft games, from imprisonment as a way to stop the Iron Horde's Dark Portal. At the time, Khadgar acknowledges this as an acceptable trade-off, but as the storyline continues his part of the plot focuses on tracking down Gul'dan and his minions before they can cause anything close to the havoc they're capable of. In the end Khadgar manages to stop Gul'dan's plan to unleash the Legion on Draenor but Gul'dan escapes to unleash it on Azeroth.
- In the "Visions of "N'Zoth" patch, Magni Bronzebeard brings you to the Chamber of the Heart where MOTHER begins assessing Titan facilities. Everything's fine until you get to Uldum, and find the Forge of Origination is offline for an unknown "root cause" (that was one of the Cataclysm instances where you help Brann Bronzebeard shut it down before it "re-originates" the entire world).Wrathion: I think we can safely assume what this "root cause" might be.
