The Ethics of Jewelcrafting Dailies

Traxy has now hit 450 in her jewelcrafting skill, which means that she gets the fun of doing endless series of daily quests in order to get Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Tokens to buy all the designs she needs. It’s been a while since I’ve run the quests on Jana (she has practically any design any person would want), so I had forgotten what the most haunting feeling was about them.

I worry about the ethics of Jewelcrafting Dailies.

I’m the sort of person who likes to immerse themselves in a character and really try to imagine how they feel about sorts of things. In the process of such immersion, I have a general feel for who my character is. Usually I like to think of my characters as at least a little bit noble, fighting for the forces of good in Azeroth versus all that is evil. So it troubles me a little bit when, for the sake of some game mechanic, one of my characters is asked to do something evil.

Jewelcrafting dailies trouble me.

Let’s take the daily I did today, Shipment: Blood Jade Amulet. In that quest, you have to go and assassinate a random Vry’kul, specifically for the purpose of obtaining an amulet that he or she might wear. Once you have the amulet, you combine it with a bloodstone and a dark jade to make the Blood Jade Amulet, which you can then turn in for a token.

I worry about the ethics of killing a sentient being, enemy that he may be, solely for the purpose of creating jewelry.

Now, I know what you might be thinking (“Traxy’s gone bonkers!”), and I know how I rationalize it. The Vry’kul have set their lot with the Lich King, and we kill them all the time in our war against the scourge. And that’s true, but that strikes me as an empty excuse. When Traxy flew out of Dalaran this afternoon in search of Vry’kul, she didn’t do it as part of some offensive against the Vry’kul. She wasn’t fighting the scourge. She was acting as a mercenary, a part of a bloodthirsty jewelcrafting cartel that will kill anybody and anything if it gets them the shipment they need for the undermine.

This disturbs me.

The Blood Jade Amulet quest isn’t even the worst of the bunch. No, that one goes to the Intricate Bone Figurine quest. In that one, you combine a sun crystal and a dark jade with a Proto-Dragon Bone, which can be found on any Northrend Proto-Dragon. It just so happens that the closest and most convenient proto-dragons to kill are Stormpeak Hatchlings, which can be found sleeping in nests on the mountains of the Storm Peaks.

Yes, Traxy (and Jana) kill baby proto-dragons for the sake of jewelry.

Would even the Lich King do something so horrible?

Now, I like jewelcrafting. It made Jana a lot of money back in the day, and it gives Trax a useful +63 stamina boost to her gear. But I worry about what these jewelcrafting dailies will do to their souls. How can they claim to represent good when, on a daily basis, they do things unspeakably evil in the name of jewelry?