Most of the iconic monsters I think of come from D&D, like the beholder or the tentacle-face guys, but the monster that will forever be etched in my brain is the Big Daddy from Bioshock. The first time I saw one of those scared the heck out of me, even though I’d heard about them beforehand (and had a statue of one sitting on my bureau).

Gorlocs don’t count as murlocs, they have the cute factor going on too much.

I do admit that the Winterfin quest chain in BT is one of my favorite ones in WoW. The tadpoles!

Spinks… you lie your friends, and I’ll lie to mine, but let’s not lie to each other, ‘K?

I think iconic monsters are something that stand out. The slimes in Dragon Warrior/Quest stand out because they had a face. In most other games, slime monsters were formless enemies, based on D&D’s oozes, puddings, and jellies. Flans were just such a funny name in the Final Fantasy games. Murlocs, as pointed out, had one of the harshest systems for new players along with a funny sound.

It’s hard to pick just one iconic monster for Meridian 59. One of the things that I loved about the game was that it had so much originality to it. Sure, there were the stock giant rats and baby spiders, but you quickly got into interesting monsters after that: fungus beasts, mutant ants, living trees that shot lightning bolts, two different groups of fey fighting for control of a location, etc. I think the most iconic monsters was perhaps the troll. Not entirely original to the game, but it was a very traditional (that is, pre-D&D) take on the beasts: big brutes with knobby skin. They were the first really “hard” monsters that newer players would encounter, so they left an definite impression.

Plus they’d post on the forums all the time. Wait, wrong type of trolls. ;P

A bit outside of the mainstream… I loved the Fruit *@#^%ers and Hobos from the Penny Arcade Adventure games.

Oh, and Pikachu.

World:
– Hogger
– Murlocs
– Kobolds
– Defias Dickheads
– Stictches
Instanced:
– Vaelstrasz
– Chromaggus
– C’Thun