Let’s say you’re a Human. You start out your adventure by slaying a few wolves, innocently enough. Then you move on to Kobolds in order to clear the mine. That’s not necessarily that bad. It’s not until when you’re close to leaving that you commit your first homicide. A group of bandits have set up across the river at the vineyards and need to be killed. You take out a few and return, your clothes and sword dripping with the blood of your fellow humans. Justice has been carried out. You’re then told to finish off the rest and take out their leader. You obey, regrettably, and begin the assault. By the end the entire farm is covered in blood and you return with the bloody head of their leader. The officer pats you on your back and sends you to Goldshire.
At Goldshire you don’t run into a lot of troubles, you kill some more Kobolds and a few Gnolls, but nothing is as bad as the farm that you had came from. That is until you get to Westfall. You are asked to start at the tip of the beach and begin killing, all the way until you reach a town now occupied by these bandits. You rush in emptying the entire town. Returning, you’re told to group up with a few others and clear their secret city under the ground.
You oblige, again, moving in and killing human after human. You slash your way from the start to the end with a group of four others. At the end you find their ship and their purpose. They were not mindless bandits but were instead exiles. Exiles from the kingdom you were protecting. They were engineers and carpenters who had rebuilt Stormwind after the first war but were denied payment. Of course, that doesn’t matter to you. They have money and loot. Taking your sword you thrust it straight through one of the best engineers Stormwind has ever seen. You then leave out the rear exit, never looking back (until Cataclysm!).
You have saved Stormwind but at what price? There was no reasoning, no diplomatic envoys to attempt to tell them to return and receive payment along with reintegration to society. There was only your sword, staff, or dagger lunged directly into everyone’s chest, head, or throat.
From there you enter the world at large and wipe out an entire faction of centaur, you clear out many enemies with no scrutiny as to if an action is good or bad. You even go so far as to ignore the reason why. You just ask for a location marked on your map before you rush out and take on your next kill task. You kill dwarves, humans, gnomes, goblins, gnolls, kobolds, orcs, blood elves, high elves, and whatever else stands in your way.
Speaking of blood elves, you wipe out the majority of their race in Netherstorm. Do you question it? Do you go, hrm, this is the last of their race except for those in Silvermoon. Should I really be doing this? No, even as a Blood Elf you have no qualms mass farming your own race in order to pick up their medallions to prove how cool you are.
By the time you’re level 80 you will have killed 10,000s of enemies if not more. All while yawning, with a bored hint to your voice as you slash through enemies with no afterthought.
You know, the story is a lot like Pokemon, especially from the Human’s perspective. You start Pokemon running out into the woods and being pulled back to Professor Oak’s house. This could be construed as the cutscene and your character’s background for being equipped to deal with the world. Afterward you do some light battling in the starter area, are shown the ropes by Professor Oak, and are then sent on to the next town of Viridian City/Goldshire.
The same applies at the second city, but major shops are now available along with more pokemon/abilities. There is no gym leader or anything challenging, so you continue on to Pewter City/Westfall. Here is the real challenge. You need to warm up before you face the gym/Deadmines and defeat Brock/Van Cleef. Overall, all of it is rather easy and a great warmup.
Of course, loyal Overpull readers know that I see the Scourge exactly like Team Rocket. Well, more accurately, the Burning Legion is Team Rocket. Everyone else is kind of the rogue Pokemon you have to fight to get from point A to B. In vanilla WoW you mostly deal with what I consider Team Rocket and the elite four (Ragnaros, Nefarion, C’thun, and Kel’thuzad) while in the later games you deal with Team Aqua (Illidan and the Blood Elves) and Team Galactic (Arthas and his crew). We’re a ways off from Pokemon: Black & White’s release so we’ll see who we can relate to ‘ol Deathwing.
Now, if only you could battle legitimately with your non-combat pets instead of having only a few combos who fight.