Video Game Cruelty Potential / Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

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• In City of Heroes, once a player reached a certain level, low-level mobs would ignore them (unless attacked) and players would get no XP from doing anything to them. It still didn't make strolling into a group of 20 or more gang members and firing off an area-of-effect power (especially one that did damage over time so they could run for a while before dropping) any less amusing.
  • This could be a case of Video Game Caring Potential as many of these mobs are menacing civilians in some form. Most low level zone mobs spawn with a large mob trying to steal a purse from a woman or a cabal of evil wizards trying to steal a citizen's soul. Taking out the street level thugs for little more than a thank-you from the rescued citizen is definitely not this trope. Of course, in City of Villains, this is certainly in full effect.
• In Dofus, in order to practice the enhancement and modification of magic items, one must use lots and lots of magic runes on items to practice. The runes come from getting items which enhance stats, and smashing them to extract the magic runes. Through a variety of ways, one can come into possession of "Bow Meows," which are cute and cuddly little kitties which follow you around. If you feed these kitties twice a day, they develop abilities to boost your stats... and since they are easy to get, they are a popular rune source. Alternately, there are some crafting recipes and the like which require one to skin a Bow Meow and use their ghost as an ingredient..
• You have the option to push someone down a well during a quest in The Elder Scrolls Online. After helping an Adventurer Archaeologist through two tombs you get to what was supposed to be a Treasure Room but is now empty. Off to one side of it is a well. When you talk with the archeologist to complete the quest you can trick him into thinking that perhaps all of the treasure is down the well. When he walks over and looks down you can then push him in.
• The Wings of the Goddess expansion of Final Fantasy XI introduced two monsters that are mostly harmless and/or beneficial: Lycopodiums and Pixies. Lycopodiums are a non-aggressive variant of the Mandragora (which is about the size and stature of a toddler) that follow players around and dance, providing the player with Regen if s/he has completed a quest. Pixies will heal and resurrect dead players whenever in range. In spite of this, players are not above carting groups of innocent, dancing Lycopodiums to their doom or killing pixies on sight. To make matters worse, pixies are known to drop Stygian Ash, a necessary item for claiming the notorious monster, Dark Ixion, giving players further justification for killing them.
  • And people wonder why Lycopodiums and Pixies went extinct.
• Final Fantasy XIV: "The Lominsan Way" tasks you and an NPC to destroy boulders to determine who is telling the truth about who had slayed a Goobbue. The NPC in question is coded as an enemy (though he won't attack you), thus you can attack him. Attacking him won't slow his progress down and killing him outright ends the quest in failure, but for some players who are either sick of his lies or know who he really is ahead of time, it can be quite cathartic to kill him over and over.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, certain objects are defined as alive in their descriptions; destroying said objects seems especially cruel. Two ways of destroying objects are smashing personal equipment, and having a Comma Chameleon eat familiar equipment. "Living" equipment includes: A (talking) miniature dormouse; Rhesus Monkey; Turtles (who are used as helmets)...
  • Hell, Turtle Taming in general. This is the item description for the Torquoise ring: "You convinced this torquise to grab and hold onto a ring setting, probably by threatening it with your pliers."
  • There is a certain two-handed club in the game called a "Flamingo Mallet." Yeah...
  • There's a lot of this in the Turtle Tamer class. In their version of the Me and My Nemesis sidequest, the only way to get into your Nemesis's lair is to free a fellow Turtle Tamer's trained acrobatic tortoises from her control, by whipping them until they break down and cry.
• In Phantasy Star Online, Rappies occasionally show up and generally pester you, but put up little resistance before whatever attack you throw their way knocks them sunny-side-down. They're playing dead, but when they get back up, they'll run away for a bit before disappearing; hit them during this time for an extra drop. In subsequent games, Rappies become no more threatening and instead exist as loot bundles before getting away; in Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, they don't even fight back, and every time an event rolls around, one of the weekly quests is "Defeat 5 [Theme] Rappies". And then tweets like these give you the idea they're doing this to the poor yellow birds on purpose...
• In Rogalia, great survival/sandbox MMORPG available on Steam, you can do it to other players. While you can't kill people that are on your claim or someone's else (or attack any mobs, friendly or other) and killing them would earn you a Player Killer status anyway, what you can do is to trap bunch of dangerous mobs on your claim (a couple of wolfs or hungry wolfs would do just fine), invite another player over and lock him in the room with these mobs. He may survive if he has weapons on him, but many players, especially new ones do not. They can teleport away to their home claim (if they have one) or to the town, but the teleportation is stopped if player gets attacked. They can't run away either as only claim owner or people allowed by him are capable of opening doors on a claim and they can't destroy things on someone else's claim. The only way for player to get out of there is to kill the wolfs (at which point he'll be so damaged that you can finish him off and take all his stuff), commit in-game suicide (you have to deal with the wolfs but you can take his stuff) or be killed by wolfs (probably not without a fight so it will be easier for you to defeat them). Bonus, if they get killed by the dangerous mobs, Player Killer status won't be applied to you and you still can take their stuff. Have fun.
• In RuneScape, baby trolls will eat all tradable items, as well as a few untradable ones. Pets are one of the things you can feed to your troll.
  • Trolls are named after the first thing that they eat. Sometimes, the item name does not become the Baby Troll's name. For example, "Troll General's Bones" becomes "My Own Dad."
  • In the quest "The Branches of Darkmeyer," part of the vampire series, your goal is to help La Résistance obtain Blisterwood, a magical wood that is believed to be the only thing that can permanently kill vampire aristocracy. Thing is, the only known tree that produces this wood is kept under lock and key in the vampire capital, and is accessible only by the most respected members of vampire society. As such, your goal is to disguise yourself as a vampire and obtain the favor of the capital's citizens. One of the ways you can do this? Slaughter defenseless humans for the vampires' amusement. While there are several other ways you can raise your favor, this, as morbidly hilarious as it sounds, is one of the fastest.
• There's a couple of enemies in Spiral Knights that are rare spawns. Two of them — the Love Puppy and Mewkat — are harmless (and the Love Puppy will even heal you). However, they can drop rare items... Or they might spawn in an arena where all enemies must be killed to move on...
• Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  • The Force-Lightning-centered Sith Inquisitor infamously has the option to electrocute people in conversations. That's not this trope — it's Played for Laughs most of the time, and the rest of the time you need information or have another good reason to do so. What is this trope is choosing to shock your own teammates.
  • The Bounty Hunter can be horrifically verbally abusive to Blizz, who is pretty much the living embodiment of cuteness, energy, and happiness.
  • Sith Warriors can not only keep Vette's Shock Collar on, but activate it every time she so much as opens her mouth. Then they can give the control to Jaesa, who quite possibly spams it more than they do. Also they can demand that Vette's long-lost sister Tivva, a brothel slave, service either them or their male crew members as a condition of buying Tivva's freedom.
  • The Sith Pureblood social ability is "Punish," which delivers a backhand slap to their companion, making them cry.
• In the classic BBS game Tradewars 2002, you could create a planet and then fly to Earth, land your spaceship, load up the cargo holds with millions of colonists eager to go into space, and bring them to your new world. Or, if you wanted to become evil so you could rob and steal and such, you could load up your cargo holds with millions of colonists, and then eject all of them into empty space; the game "rewarded" you for this by lowering your alignment.
  • This exact same trick is also usable in Starport Galactic Empires, for the same reason. You could also eject people who have hired you to fly them to a different port.
• There is no shortage of awful things you can do in WildStar. Blow up poachers with mind-controlled rhinos? Sure. Assist the Chua with their experiments, almost all of which involve killing, maiming, or exploding something? Why not. Kill some innocent sheep or scare them into mines to watch them blow up? We're ashamed you thought you couldn't do that in the first place.
• In World of Warcraft, there is a quest in Hillsbrad Foothills called "Do the Right Thing." You are given the quest after you see that there are humans buried in the ground with their heads sticking out, with Scourge roaming around in the area. Since you cannot allow the Scourge to reinforce their numbers by using the humans something has to be done about it. You are given the option of pulling the human out and letting him go free, but you are also given the option of bashing the humans heads in with a shovel you were given upon accepting the quest. Even more hilarious is that their heads EXPLODE upon doing this. Killing them even comes with its own debuff.
  Head Asplode: You should really reexamine your definition of "right."
  • The Death Knight's Corpse Explosion spell can be used to blow up corpses of dead mobs and players for when mocking them by using an emote just won't cut it. The original version of the spell could also be cast on the Death Knight's own minion to turn it into an Action Bomb.
  • In the Valley of the Four Winds you'll sometimes find a large baby crocolisk named Manglemaw eating at the bodies of dead cranes. Kill it, then you'll invoke the wrath of its mother which has grown in size from the properties of the water, then you can kill her and loot her tail to turn in for a few gold. It's already established that your character is not above child murder given the dragon whelps and similar newborn creatures that you've probably killed, but still.
  • If you're tired of virmen taking up residence in your soil patches in Sunsong Ranch after you harvest a crop, then you can simply run over the little bastards with the plow you can get when you reach Exalted with the Tillers, which will actually stun them and take off 70% of their health. (Though some may prefer to do this because it's pragmatic, not because it's cruel.)
    • Speaking of virmen, one quest has you throwing turnips painted orange at them. They hop over to them, thinking it's a weird carrot of some kind, and run away in fear and confusion when it's revealed to be a turnip. You can keep throwing orange turnips at these virmen as long as you have the quest. (Eventually, to progress in this zone, you do need to turn the quest in, and the quest item doesn't work outside that area.)
  • In the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, the first thing you see once you make it through the main gate into the city is Ji Firepaw about to be executed by Kor'kron forces when a nearby candle goes out. What's supposed to happen is that you kill the overseer about to kill him and Aysa Cloudsinger carries him out; the overseer will kill Ji if you wait too long, and upon seeing him die Aysa will attempt a Roaring Rampage of Revenge with predictable results. Keep in mind, however, this is a non-canon choice because Aysa and Ji are alive in later expansions.
  • In one area of Frostfire Ridge, there are pairs of Thunderlord orcs trying to restrain captured gronns. Attacking either the orcs or the gronns will cause the gronns to launch the orcs upward and forward and they'll die upon hitting the ground.
  • In the death knight's questline to obtain the Deathlord's Vilebrood Vanquisher mount, you're sent to assault the Ruby Sanctum for a tome that will reveal the location of a long-dead red dragon. The current Lich King tells you that you can either kill only as many red dragons as you need to or you can kill every last one, potentially expediting the red dragonflight's eventual extinction. Killing all of them will cause him to chime in with "You are empty inside, just like me." On top of that, it was originally intended to reward you with a Feat of Strength.
  • One quest in Borean Tundra has you capturing a Beryl Sorcerer and bringing it to the Kirin Tor, where they give you a special electric wand so you can torture answers out of him (because they aren't allowed to torture someone). Once you get the information you can keep using it. And he'll protest that he doesn't have any more to tell you. And when you finish the quest you can still buy a prototype of the same wand and you can use it on him a couple of times.
    You have shown me the face of true evil, <player name>
  • The Horde version of the War of the Thorns storyline in Battle for Azeroth has a quest where you team up with Lorash, an undead blood elf assassin, and help him sack Astranaar by marking the night elf guards so he can kill them. You can also mark the vendors, causing him to comment that he likes your coldness. Also, killing them is the canon course of action; if you play the Alliance version, you're told that the civilians weren't spared.
  • The Alliance version of the quest chain in Silithus in 8.0 has you murder goblin workers in cold blood. Since you're technically speaking not at war yet, and Silithus is neutral territory, this is pretty bad.
  • If you actually think about it, the extremely popular Deadmines dungeon is very cruel. These poor guys just want to get paid for rebuilding your sweet capital city. And if you're that rogue who pickpockets them but leaves them alive (you know who you are) then you are really quite a scumbag. Seriously, those people have families! The Cataclysm version lampshades it by having the daughter of the original final boss return (so not only were you a douche, but you weren't that smart about it; Nice Job Breaking It, Hero)
  • The entire Death Knight starter area plays with this trope. It is played straight at first when you mark targets to be taken down by poison arrows. The game also lets you murder the workers to your heart's content. You are supposed to be in the Scourge, after all. It is subverted later in that, according to their dialog, what you're doing to the Scarlet Crusaders is not as bad as what their superiors do to them. Given that you are at one point sticking them with a magical brand until they faint, this is perhaps the most disturbing part of this whole extremely disturbing area. Given the looks of the place that you rescue Koltira Deathweaver from later, this claim is believable. But the trope is then played straight later on when you mercilessly mow down an entire army of Crusaders with their own cannon. Even later, the questline has you demonstrate your loyalty by killing an Argent Dawn NPC who is set up as your best friend.
  • As long as a player is flagged for PVP, they can attack NPCs of the opposite faction with impunity. Of course, some players delight in such behavior.

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