Please remove Shark Fin from game.

I was happily levelling a provisioner until i reached t4 and started to fish for resources and look through the recipes i would get.

I was shocked to see shark fins as resources and shark fin soup as a recipe.

This encourages the barbaric practice of finning where the tastless fins (cartilage) are cut from the fish and the still living animal is thrown back where it sinks to the bottom and suffocates slowly.

The cruelty and waste is horrific not to mention many shark species are endangered and 90% of large fish stocks have been depleted in the last 100 years.

I would hope my children can grow up to dive and see these creatures, I know i have enjoyed this myself.

Please remove these components and recipes from the game and replace with something that does not reflect such an abhorent practice.

I am not a vegetarian and enjoy eating fish but if you spend any time researching this practice you will agree its horribly cruel and waseful.

Norrathian sharks are a different breed altogether. Being the magical sort, their fins quickly regenerate over time so the harvesting of shark fins in Norrath is quite eco friendly.

I do concede however that there may have been overfishing done in the past few months as there are far fewer fishing nodes now than there were in the past.

:smileyhappy:

I figured they were harvested from all the sharks we have to kill for quests.

is killing deer as cruel and waseful?
where do you draw the line on a game ?

I want whaling as a viable option in the game. Actually I think the next expansion should have an arctic theme, with lots of Minkie whales ready and willing for my harpoon.

Only thing I find peculiar about sharks atm, are the so called 'whale sharks' in the sea around the sinking sands. They look more like great white on sterioids than whale sharks who has a completely different colour and are herbivore, and wouldn't attack swimmers like the 'whale sharks' of sinking sands does.

If you took the deer, chopped its legs off while it was still alive and left it to die slowly over hours or days while only taking the legs to eat then yes i would have a problem with killing deer.
I dont think you understood my post, its not the killing of the animal but the way it is tortured to death and the way that the meat is left to rot while only the fin is taken that upsets me.
If i go to a node and retreive a shark fin i have to wonder what i did with the rest of the shark as its not in my inventory.

Okay. I understand your altruism, but I still think you're over-reacting. It's a game. Do we have to worry about the hole in the Ozone layer that Lunclin's explosion has caused? Or the rampant poaching of badgers? Or the exploitation of gnolls, which are not an inferior race as generally assumed, but rational, thinking peoples with their own society and lore?
nah.

What shark? It's a game, there is no shark.

In EQ1 it used to give me a bit of a winge when I first saw Stonebrunt mountians and there were pandas. Pandas! of all creatures. Then they attacked me! It's really just a game but I've always thought that any creature we kill in a game should not be similar to any real creature.
There's manticore,tigers,lions and many other real looking creatures. We know it's just a game. I feel kindof bad for all the young kids that play these games. Is it good for them to kill pandas and people, even if it's a game?
Then I think about what country owns sony. I think about how they treat the dolphins, how they deal with unwanted pets (theres a 'mail slot' you dump the unwanted pet into) the cage is cleared once a week. animals are not fed or watered. I think about that countries new meat plant in the usa, that takes the wild horses off BLM lands. Gives them their first ride packed into a double decker truck, packed panicing for a 48 hour ride to the plant where they are dragged in the air by one hind foot, alive. For horse steaks in sonylands. A history of cruelty toward humans. A history of cruelty to animals.
I don't know how hard it would be to change all the real type of animals and foods to more make believe types. Sure wouldn't hurt the game at all if the names were changed. But I doubt Sony corp. cares at all and they may even like the idea of 'shark fin soup' and panda hides.

Yes its a game but the game character is played by a person using their morals and ethics.
Also shark fin and shark fin soup are not just in game items but real life items as well, by SOE having them in game it signifies that they endorse these products and the methods used to make them.
If there was no link between real ilfe products and virtual ones there would be no fuss about marketing items or brands in a game.
I'm literally sicked by this (or im just getting a cold) but i wish they would pull this from the game and replace them.
For the posters questioning or criticising this please consider what would be the harm in replacing these items with something else?

On a side note: all the house pets you can get are all coded so you cannot destroy them. You have to find new homes for them. As much as I'm beginning to dislike Norrath, I was touched by that clever detail.

You're fishing in a school of fish right? No where do you see a shark amongst your harvest. Maybbbeee, the fish are a form of Norathian Carnivore fish. These fish might feed off of sharks, or at the very least have the capability to defend themselves from sharks. What you have found must then be what is left of the last shark to have tried to remove one of the school's members from it's population.

No where in your status did it tell you you caught shark, stripped it's fins and left it to suffer. So, take your status message literally.. You found a shark fin... that's all.

This is a game, its purpose is to provide entertainment. The people who develop the game, are just like you and me. Prior to reading your post, I had no knowledge that shark fin soup was a problem ethically. It would be a fairly impossible task for the creators of any game this large to make the game 100% politically correct, and not cause a problem with anyone's moral and ethical beliefs.

That is why games like this tend to be rated towards mature audiences (at least teens). So they can seperate the real life from the fantasy world, and not be influenced by anything they might see, and hopefully not be insulted by something within the game world.

My 2 copper.

Bon Appetite.

I'd liked to know where abouts you come from in the world please and then tell me that your culture does nothing to upset another one.
It will be impossible.
People from Norway,Finland,Japan just to name a few off the top of my head have been eating whales for a long time.
Doesnt make it right in some opinion but its there way of life.
Dont blame soe on this blame the human culture.
Fact of life all meat comes from live animals.What makes whales any different to chickens,pigs or cows.
They all have feelings and are all nature.
Should soe take out all the wood nodes from the game just to please all the forest savers?
You have to draw the line somewhere.This is a GAME if you dont like it go play another game that doesnt envolve killing something.
Sims online comes to mind.:smileywink:

edit Would you be happy if they kept fins in and made another recipe for whale meat pies and and class for rubber from whale blubber?.
Message Edited by zorros on 10-04-2005 12:19 AM

They've introduced PvP to the game too. Should we ask them to remove it, because killing other players should not be a moral and ethical lesson we want to teach.
We kill animals and monsters to remove their eyeballs, optic nerves, ears etc etc for the Lore & Legend quests. Most of those monsters are also anthropomorphic.
We kill human mobs too all the time of course - not just abstracted monsters. Is that a good moral lesson?
Or perhaps you'd say that torturing a shark is worse than killing a human just for gain? That's a moral lesson too of course that could potentially lead to things like extremist animal rights activists injuring and even killing people who they think of as being evil.

There is an argument that could be made against shark fins in game, but you have to go looking for the argument. There is also a very similar argument against the game itself - in that it's based around violence and killing (remember even tradeskillers only sell their wares because people need them to do the killing pretty much)... perhaps we should just ask for the game to be removed in its entirety?
You need to approach these questions sensibly and not go looking for the argument. Once you start hacking bits of a game away because of potential real world moral values - then you leave open a reasoning that can be applied to other areas that you wouldn't want to lose. The lesson can also end up being turned against yourself. Going down that road is always a very dangerous way indeed.
X

Message Edited by XtremSummons on 10-04-2005 01:32 AM

Very nicely put.
I strugle with dislexia and ur post pretty well sums up what i would have like to have said.
1 example of animal rights protesters in the uk was to dig up a 80 year grandmother and hide her body,which has still yet to be found just because her son ran a animal farm thats provided animals for testing new drugs,which was totaly legel.
Just shows these peoples moral's are no better than anyone else.

/sigh. This is what it's come to? It's a game. If you are offended in any way, there's the simplest of solutions -- Don't play. Think of it this way, you can donate your monthly fee to a charity that fights shark abuse IN THE REAL WORLD.

Just want to clarify here...

You get an item called a shark fin and assume that the way you got it in game was by your character mutilating a shark and leaving it to die? You have serious issues.

That aside, why don't you have a problem with:

- Necromancer animating the rotting corpses of human beings.
- Brutal slaying of random people, animals, or other creatures for no other reason than the experience of it.
- Magic spells that infect people with disease or poison.

And why is shark fin soup wrong? Next will you complain that Chocolate Bars should not be in the game because it encourages children to get fat? What about swords? I mean, they're sharp! Someone could get hurt!

This is just rediculous. It's like activists everywhere; they see one thing they think is wrong and they don't realize how hypocritical they are. Do you eat any meat at all? How is it okay to kill the shark for the fins if you leave him to rot on land, but not okay if you throw him back in the water for other marine scavengers to eat?

real life agendas have no place in a fantasy game setting. period.

When my guild first tried the Zalak raid, we got spanked pretty badly. We were joking that we should all sue for personal injury pain and suffering and for armor repair costs. I told my sister (a real world mega-lawyer) the story and she said: "Let me get this straight. A group of you broke and entered onto this Zalak Guy's property, with intention to murder him for personal gain. You attacked him, he killed you in self-defense...and you want to SUE?"

LOL....
Message Edited by Arielle Nightshade on 10-04-2005 08:57 AM

I like your sister