On penalties for dying in WoW

I wrote the below as a comment to a post at Not Addicted, another MMO blog. It kind of took on a life of its own, so I'm reposting it here for your eyeballs. If you like reading long articles, take a peek!

The OP was saying how death penalties are too soft in WoW, and they should bring back stiffer penalties a la Everquest, where a death meant you lost items and/or XP permanently. He argues it would foster a stronger community. Check here for background, or just read on ...

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I can see where you're going when thinking stiffer death penalties would make a community stronger. But I think you underestimate people's ability to inconvience others, conciously or not.

In WoW, I have found more and more people are taking the spirit healer rez (10 minute, 75% stat reduction, gear takes a 25% durability hit) instead of bothering to do a corpse run. If I die in some far-off place with no graveyard nearby, or the kind of run that involves running deep into a cave or something, often I will spirit rez, and fly to a town or go get a cup of coffee while my 10 minute's stat penalty goes away. I don't see it as 10g and 10 minutes wasted; its just more convenient. But it only remains convenient as long as I stay in that solo vacuum.

I don't like it when a group is forming and one member joins with 8 minutes left of rez-sickness. Now we have to wait 8 minutes, or at least start with a gimped group. To me, that's inconsiderate and a waste of 4 other people's time. The point is, penalty or not, there will always be people who don't care and will end up causing grief or problems for others. Make the penalty stronger, and people who don't care how or whether they die or not will only have a stronger impact on other player's experiences.

WoW is my first MMO, and I haven't dipped my toes into any other similar game yet. It seems to me the idea of endgame 'progression' means wiping against a boss until you get your strategy down. Dying over and over again is expected to master the hardest content. How is/was endgame handled in EQ, etc? Did guilds lose levels attempting endgame bosses? With non-instanced areas, were attempts interrupted by asshat griefing?

If I attempted an endgame boss and death meant some penalty that kept me from attempting it for awhile, then so be it, its the endgame boss and should be particularly tough, and a penalty for failure is not so unreasonable.

But, if I was playing as usual in WoW and an unexpected add, some lag, or a disconnect led to a random death, and I rezzed 300,000 experience points backwards into level 79, I would find getting that XP back a little frustrating. Not hard, just irritating to go out and farm 300k xp. If I would lose items forever, that would piss me off, especially if it had cost me x number of badges or y honor points. And if my death was due to random player griefing or other player asshattery, I would get really pissed. I wouldn't commit suicide over such occurences, but I probably would not continue paying Blizzard for the right to re-level and re-gear a character over and over again.

So why would Blizzard design a game that drives away players? They are reducing death penalties to retain and add new players. Do you really want more death penalties, more corpse runs? More time required to recover from a death? Is that a way to create a stronger community?

The community you choose to participate in is only as strong as its weakest link, and the solution is to establish your own community within the overall player base. It is up to you, not Blizzard, to decide who you adventure with. Establishing stiffer death penalties will not eliminate the Johnny Noobsocks of the world, it will just make their existence that much more of an annoyance to you. In fact, wouldn't stiff death penalties whip up the griefers, and increase pvp griefing and non-instanced encounter griefing? I have a feeling griefer types would actively subscribe to WoW for the sole purpose of de-leveling others. Its easy to see past examples of this - a new PVP Season comes out and 1 hour later there are a million corpses around the PVP vendors, because griefer types knew that a bunch of people more interested in shopping than fighting back would congregate in a specific area. Note this has been changed in WotLK, and the PVP vendors are accessible in 'Safe' zones. Again you can see Blizzard is reducing the incentive for griefing in such cases.

I think there should be less penalties for performing poorly as a group, and more rewards for performing better as a group. We've had Bear Mounts, timed runs, and now acheivements for succeeding in under difficult conditions. Players are encouraged to work together more because the lootz are better if they succeed. These are the mechanics that get players motivated towards doing better and working together.

Maybe there could be some more rewards, like an extra badge for no deaths during a run. Even just a little more gold dropped or rep earned will bring about a change, I think. I know we may think we want more corpse runs and losing levels as penalties, but really all we want is a fun, contiguous MMO environment, where our fellow man matches our social expectations, and our status and social standing in-game is a reflection of our actions and behavior. Some of that comes from players, and some of that comes from game design, but I think there is a more elegant solution to improving the situation than reaming players extra-hard for dying.