If you play a Death Knight in WoW, there's this one quest early on in the starting area where you have to kill a prisoner to show your allegiance to the Lich King. This prisoner turns out to be someone you knew in your past life. When you tried to kill them, they tried to remind you of who you were, how you were good friends/family/mentored by them and how good a person you were in your past life. But of course you'll still have to kill them in the end.
Doing this part always bothers me.
They didn't put a lot of thought into designing the quests in WoW, besides trying to figure out what might be entertaining to do in a praticular place and time.
I thought it was a little ridiculous that as an orc (or troll) you are asked to save some plainstriders that have been stranded by a river flood by scaring them over to the other side of the river where they will be safe. Next thing you know, you are on the other side of the river doing a quest to kill the same plainstriders that have been interfering with the caravans.
Even on the alli side, usually the elves will be like "do this quest, but please don't hurt the wildlife, they are so precious," on one hand, and on the other they are like "kill it, but it's really okay, because it is beyond redemption (or, it was threatening us, or some other lame-ass excuse)."
I always do feel bad about the whole outcome of the Westfall questline, though.