Death Penalty

I recently read a post over at www.WoWInsider.com about the Death Penalty in WoW & Vanguard, and since I've played both of those games, and 19 other MMO's I figured I would comment on the touchy subject.

I started my MMO life with Ultima Online in 1997, and upon my first death I was just happy that I didn't loose my character, which is what one would think with only real life as a knowledge base for 'death'.

In Ultima Online, when you died you would fall off your horse and your body was completely lootable (sorry, no soulbound here), and most of the time the player that killed you would also kill your horse. You would not get teleported to a graveyard, but instead you were a ghost on the spot of you corpse and had to run to find a healer, and then run back to your corpse (if there was a chance you weren't completely looted).

I grew accustomed to this harsh style of death in an MMO, and I'm sad that new players to the genre are being introduced to such a cake-walk style of death. I can understand why people get upset at the thought of a prehistoric death penalty when they started with something so light, but to never experience it is a shame, since it provides a serious "watch over your shoulder" type of gameplay.

I am at a crossroads in this issue, since I've experienced both sides of the fence. I would like to see a game that has enough of a penalty to make me not just type "/sit" when I'm ganked by a higher level; however, I don't want any more holes in my walls from the nights I was dry-looted by an arch nemisis.

All-in-all, I think since WoW has set the standard with their high subscription count, many developers will steer clear of anything harsher than a one-way corpse run w/ an opt out feature such as resurrection sickness.

The days of dry-looting, corpse dismemberment, horse killing (and eating, heh), and 30 min. corpse runs are over!

I still play UO, but on a free "player-run" server. If you can snag the UO client from a friend with the disc, or a bit-torrent, then feel free to check out www.UOgateway.com
Once you install the client, and download and open UOgateway, just click on the "Public Servers" tab and pick a server, but I recommend "UO:Gamers Hybrid" (www.UOGamers.com)

~Keystone