Quick permadeath idea.

[Mesozoic]

I hope this is new.

Anyhow, in this idea an existing and / or "typical" MMOG establishes a new permadeath server in additon to several "normal" servers.  Rather than simply deleting the character upon death, the character is removed from the permadeath server, automatically and permanently transferred to a "normal" server designated by the player.  The character is not lost, but his access to the PD world is.  From this point on the character could adventure and proceed through the normal game with no unusual penalties.

[stray]

"Typical" MMOG (like the kind with levels?) with Permadeath?

What's the whole point to the idea? What is it trying to accomplish (honest question)?

[Pococurante]

As soon as you say PD of any kind in the same breath as MMOG you're probably mixing incompatible game mechanics.  Bumping someone to another server is just another way of separating them from their community.

IMO I think most PvP players don't really want this sort of persistence getting in the way of fun-fragging.  In an RPG environment you could probably have PD in rare circumstances or (again) as a result of aging but you also need a mechanic so that basically the avatar keeps trucking.  One thing that comes to mind is one has to groom their offspring/replacement - that could be as non-invasive as simply setting the basic parameters and "parenting/whatever" all happens offline.

[Mesozoic]

Yes, a typical MMOG with permadeath.  For the same reasons that hardcore Diablo II (the kind with levels)  is popular amongst a certain portion of that fanbase.  A lot of people, myself included, would love to see how far they can get before being killed.  Note that I'm not necessarily talking about a pvp server.

The idea is to bring in that crowd while trying to deflate some of the harsh sting of OMG lagspike PKed me! or whatever.  The dead whiner gets to keep his character while his surviving compatriots maintain the feel of permadeath, all while the developing company does not have to spend limitless, fruitless hours of CSR time everytime someone's power goes out or their connection hiccups. 

Yes, this idea intentionally separates a character from the community.  Thats the permadeath.  People not up for that would play on other servers.  Of course the player can start another character on the same server.  Or he can go play the same character with another community. 

[stray]

For the same reasons that hardcore Diablo II (the kind with levels)  is popular amongst a certain portion of that fanbase.

And what reason would that be? I asked this at first, and all you've answered with is "Because Diablo II did it".

And?

Can you tell me why Diablo II did it then?

As for the reasons behind transfering characters after death, instead of perma-deleting them: Sure, that makes sense. Now I just want to know why the perma-death itself would be there in the first place. Because as far as I can tell, it's merely a game mechanic (in this particular kind of game, that is) that caters only to catasses. It's basically just a fancy way of putting in a shitload of xp debt -- Except in this case, a person constantly has to pointlessly experience the same shitty content over and over again.

[tazelbain]

For the same reasons that hardcore Diablo II (the kind with levels)  is popular amongst a certain portion of that fanbase.

And what reason would that be? I asked this at first, and all you've answered with is "Because Diablo II did it".

And?

Can you tell me why Diablo II did it then?

As for the reasons behind transfering characters after death, instead of perma-deleting them: Sure, that makes sense. Now I just want to know why the perma-death itself would be there in the first place. Because as far as I can tell, it's merely a game mechanic (in this particular kind of game, that is) that caters only to catasses. It's basically just a fancy way of putting in a shitload of xp debt -- Except in this case, a person constantly has to pointlessly experience the same shitty content over and over again.

They like it because its a challenge, like nethack. It wouldn't hurt a game because its optional.  But I wonder if it would be popular enough to just the extra effort.  People will still complain.

[stray]

That kind of challenge makes sense.....In a game of skill. I could see it making sense in BF2 or Planetside...Or even UO. But this?

[tazelbain]

That kind of challenge makes sense.....In a game of skill. I could see it making sense in BF2 or Planetside...Or even UO. But this?

From my mmog experence, a permadeath death server would be ball-bustingly hard.  You would have to know the game extremely well, be very cautious, have good skills, and shit good luck.  Not my idea of fun, but hey if it could keep a couple thousand extra accounts active, it may be worth it.

It would be very interesting to see a community on perma-death PvE server.  The amout of teamwork, trust, and nerve to do anything like EQ raids would be impressive.

[Strazos]

It would be more feasible if you could still use resurrection spells.

[Trippy]

I hope this is new.

Anyhow, in this idea an existing and / or "typical" MMOG establishes a new permadeath server in additon to several "normal" servers.  Rather than simply deleting the character upon death, the character is removed from the permadeath server, automatically and permanently transferred to a "normal" server designated by the player.  The character is not lost, but his access to the PD world is.  From this point on the character could adventure and proceed through the normal game with no unusual penalties.

I'm not sure I understand the point of this. Are the permadeath and non-permadeath servers the same except for the difference in death penalty? If so then the only reason to play on the permadeath is cause you like the challenge of permadeath and once you die there's no point in playing that same character on the non-permadeath servers, you'll just make a new one on the permadeath ones. If the gameplay and/or rewards are different (e.g. there is phatter loot on the permadeath servers) then maybe some of them will keep playing on the non-permadeath servers when they die (this assumes you get to keep your special permadeath-server-only items on the non-permadeath servers) but then there will be endless whining from the non-permadeath players saying how it's unfair that the permadeath server players get better stuff.

If you are trying to solve the "act of God" problem with permadeath gameplay (i.e. you die because of something outside of your control) then maybe it should be more like arcade games where you have a number of lives you can lose before the game ends and there are ways in game to increase that number (with some sort of hard cap). So you can afford to die every once in a while but if you die too often within a certain period of time it's over for that character. As an aside this reminds me of the rez stick that was in EQ that had a limited number of charges that certain key players (i.e. the key monks) in our guild would carry around. Those items were used as the absolutely last resort in a total raid wipe if there was no other way to get the guild rezzed like if there was a total cleric wipe in Veeshan's Peak and the camped "emergency" cleric somehow died as well.

[Mesozoic]

And what reason would that be? I asked this at first, and all you've answered with is "Because Diablo II did it".

And?

Can you tell me why Diablo II did it then?

As for the reasons behind transfering characters after death, instead of perma-deleting them: Sure, that makes sense. Now I just want to know why the perma-death itself would be there in the first place. Because as far as I can tell, it's merely a game mechanic (in this particular kind of game, that is) that caters only to catasses. It's basically just a fancy way of putting in a shitload of xp debt -- Except in this case, a person constantly has to pointlessly experience the same shitty content over and over again.

Many people like the idea of permadeath.  In the proper context, it could be quite fun.  I'm not sure what other "point" or "meaning" there is to any game.

And I don't see it as catering to the catass.  A catass is a person who advances by the sheer magnitude of available time to play games.  If anything, catasses benefit from a lower death penalty, since it gets them back on their feet faster, gaining more levels with their time with less need to actually play well.

But permadeath is more about teamwork, well-laid plans, and yes - skillful play.  There is skill to these things, there are GOOD healers and BAD healers, tanks who suck and tanks who can spot when an add needs to be peeled, mages who get too much aggro and those who can keep themselves alive, etc. 

But I don't want to derail.  I'm not trying to sell the idea of permadeath to people, I just came up with an idea to implement it for those who would enjoy it.

[stray]

Well, I DO want you to sell the idea to me  . No harm in that. If I don't understand it, then your main idea won't make any sense to me either (and I'd like it to).

[Sairon]

Might work decently in a game with a very very low grind. However I don't think pushing the character on to another server will actually help any way. If you die and your character goes to a normal server then it might as well get deleted, since you get seperated from your community.

[Mesozoic]

Might work decently in a game with a very very low grind. However I don't think pushing the character on to another server will actually help any way. If you die and your character goes to a normal server then it might as well get deleted, since you get seperated from your community.

Let me try it this way:

If I came to the this board and simply said that some MMOG out there ought to have a PD server, then the (understandable) response would be that players would whine and complain about the death of each character, and would constantly petition GMs/CSRs, generally causing a revenue drain that would outweigh the revenue bonus from having a unique ruleset.  The suits would see that such a server would cost more than it brought in, and would never go for it.  So due to potential whiners, no one gets PD.

So the idea is to try to systematically mitigate the pain of PD while still being "real PD."  Ideas like "multiple lives" mitigate PD only to the extent that its not really PD at all, but some standard server/permadeath half-measure. 

When someone runs to the official board and whines that their character was permakilled unfairly (which will happen no matter what), the developers and the pro-PD types need to have some consolation reward that deflates the whiner's argument without compromising what permadeath is, and which does not involve an expensive CSR spending inordinate amounts of time with each complaint.  In other words, the "consolation" needs to be a part of the ruleset - not just a line item on a EULA or some CSR policy, although those would be needed as well to present a consistent company policy towards permadeath. (Basically the company policy would be "Tough luck," but for that to work the ruleset needs to be a little more giving.)

Yes, the character loses all access to his "community."  Thats the nature of permadeath.  You're cranking up the potential loss in order to crank up the tension and excitement of the gameplay.  Many people don't see that as worthwhile, or don't understand it at all - and thats why we're talking about a new server ruleset to an existing game rather than a new, totally-permadeath game.  I would no sooner try to convince someone who hates PD to play PD than I would try to convince a total PvEer to play Shadowbane. 

[Trippy]

So the idea is to try to systematically mitigate the pain of PD while still being "real PD."  Ideas like "multiple lives" mitigate PD only to the extent that its not really PD at all, but some standard server/permadeath half-measure. 

But I still don't understanding how moving that character to a non-PD server really mitigates the pain. Yeah sure the character is not technically dead anymore but why would they still want to play that character on the non-PD server since it doesn't have the same challenge? Wouldn't they just roll up a new character on the PD server? You seem to be thinking of more from the CS perspective -- how do we cut down on the PD server CS tickets? -- than from the PD player's perspective -- how can I be sure my character isn't killed unfairly?

[TheWalrus]

Or in WoWs case, whats your solution to 3/4 of your population dying in a fight when the server poops a ghost?

[Mesozoic]

So the idea is to try to systematically mitigate the pain of PD while still being "real PD."  Ideas like "multiple lives" mitigate PD only to the extent that its not really PD at all, but some standard server/permadeath half-measure. 

But I still don't understanding how moving that character to a non-PD server really mitigates the pain. Yeah sure the character is not technically dead anymore but why would they still want to play that character on the non-PD server since it doesn't have the same challenge? Wouldn't they just roll up a new character on the PD server? You seem to be thinking of more from the CS perspective -- how do we cut down on the PD server CS tickets? -- than from the PD player's perspective -- how can I be sure my character isn't killed unfairly?

Well again, this would be done in a primarily "normal" game that has established standard-rules servers, and the player in question gets to pick the destination server.  So a WoW player with mains on Argent Dawn might select Argent Dawn as his "loser's circle" and then go play on the PD server.  If/when his char dies on the PD server at Xth level, that character is dead forever on the PD server but re-appears on Argent Dawn at that same level with all his equipment, money, and so on.  Perhaps, even, a regular Argent Dawn gaming group or guild takes a shot at the PD server, and all designate Argent Dawn as their backup.  Just as a diversion from the standard game. 

Yes, I'm looking at it from a CS perspective, because the potential CS costs are probably the biggest single hurdle to making this kind of a server.  There are still, as everyone knows, "server poops" and other technical issues that can't be written around. Some people will inevitably be killed unfairly and will kick and scream and use naughty words on the forums.  The point is to offer enough of a consolation prize that the CSR time is reduced to something managable / profitable.

In the case of a total server crash - or any other server-side issue which is clearly the developer's fault and wipes a large number of people out - you could resort to the "resurrection code" that would still be in place from the standard ruleset.  So everyone logs back in after a crash, and those that were killed are in ghost form - a form they would never see on that server in any self-induced scenario.  Heck, maybe they are instantly, fully rezzed at a safe place.  As long as its the dev's fault, reduce the aggravation to as close to zero as possible. 

[Righ]

There'd be a fuck of a lot of hunters on that server.

[Nija]

I liked playing on permadeath PVP muds back in 'nam. It worked like this - Your typical character would reach around level 50 before being worthless. Every death you had a 20% chance to lose a point of con. Each level you gain, you could spend points replacing the con you lost, along with raising your other stats like str, dex, and int. With enough deaths you're left with very little con, low max hp, but items/char name/etc intact. With enough deaths as your level your character, you wouldn't be able to keep up your strength as a warrior, making you less effective in that regard as well. Basically, if you sucked, you sucked. If you were good, you were good.

The way 'con' worked was that it affected your overall health. Even affected the speed at which you cast spells.

It took about 20 hours /played to reach 'level 40' or whatever.

I think the same idea could be expanded upon to work in a graphical world, because 20 hours to reach 'max' level won't keep subscriptions unless you're doing something crazy like having orgys for the endgame content.

[Megrim]

This is why i've always been a fan of the D&D system: you have permadeath in that, if you _die_ and have no-one (in the case of mmorpgs your party members) to drag the body back to a temple and/or have a res spell/scroll available then yes, you are permadead.

However, if you plan ahead, you should never actually suffer the *sob* heartwrenching experience of re-rolling. All the stupid rest of it (stat loss, gold loss, etc..) can then usually be thrown out because there is no need to punish the player (xp loss/debt? yer, no kthnx) beyond the already plausable-yet-avoidable threat of permadeath. 

 - meg

[Sairon]

This is why i've always been a fan of the D&D system: you have permadeath in that, if you _die_ and have no-one (in the case of mmorpgs your party members) to drag the body back to a temple and/or have a res spell/scroll available then yes, you are permadead.

However, if you plan ahead, you should never actually suffer the *sob* heartwrenching experience of re-rolling. All the stupid rest of it (stat loss, gold loss, etc..) can then usually be thrown out because there is no need to punish the player (xp loss/debt? yer, no kthnx) beyond the already plausable-yet-avoidable threat of permadeath. 

 - meg

What purpose would this serve other than forcing teaming? I don't think it would make the game more fun, just a possibility of something extremly irritating for the players.

[Alkiera]

This is why i've always been a fan of the D&D system: you have permadeath in that, if you _die_ and have no-one (in the case of mmorpgs your party members) to drag the body back to a temple and/or have a res spell/scroll available then yes, you are permadead.

However, if you plan ahead, you should never actually suffer the *sob* heartwrenching experience of re-rolling. All the stupid rest of it (stat loss, gold loss, etc..) can then usually be thrown out because there is no need to punish the player (xp loss/debt? yer, no kthnx) beyond the already plausable-yet-avoidable threat of permadeath. 

 - meg

What purpose would this serve other than forcing teaming? I don't think it would make the game more fun, just a possibility of something extremly irritating for the players.

If one made a study of every MMO death discussion on this forum, and it's previous incarnations one would discover this truism:  One person's fun is another person's extremely irritating.

Alkiera

[Yegolev]

I think you have it backwards.  Have the entire game use permadeath, and naturally designed for such.  Upon reaching a milestone, perhaps a final quest or something, move the character to a non-permadeath server.  This could even be a different world instead of merely a copy of the "mortal realm".  I stole this idea from a game I used to play.

[Typhon]

I've been playing around with a design like this in my head (course, since I don't get paid for designing, it's unlikely to ever leave my head), cept the death has a point, an isn't really perma, it's just play altering.

Player starts in the middle-world(s).  The early middle-world game is relatively simple up to a point, but at that point the player must start taking risks.  Risk-taking eventually leads to death which leads to the player becoming a spirit and having to choose a specfic lower-world to incarnate in.  The goal in the lower-world is to accumalte enough (let's say "life", although "vitae", "spirit" or "karma" works just as well) to re-animate in the middle-world.

The time spent in the spirit realm shouldn't be wasted, some skills/options that are achieved in the spirit realm should not be accessible in any other way.  That said, visits to the spirit world(s) should not be entirely desirable, perhaps the player is now more suceptible to attacks of a certain type (for instance we could make the spirit worlds be based on elements, so if the player went to the plane of fire, he would be thereafter more vulnerable to cold).

Eventually the player gets good enough so that he ascends to the upper-worlds.  The upper-worlds would also have different gameplay (in my head the upper-worlds gameplay is more like an RTS game, with the upper-worlds player trying to achieve certain goals in the middle-world.  There are both npc and pc "RTS players" in the upper-worlds, which give "quests" to players and npcs in the middle-worlds to help further their goals).  Losing an upper-world match would result in the player dropping into middle-world.

The underlying concept is that death, while not pleasant and not without drawbacks, provides avenues of progresses to the player that differ from the avenues provided by success.  Whatever status/loot the player had been attempting leading up to death is lost (lootable by other players/npcs), but that status/loot will impact the players starting state in the next lower world (I'm leaning toward calling it karma, and making karma be the standard of transfer between worlds).

In my head the world is full PvP, but the only kills that are karma-free are those kills directed by a higher-world player (who takes the debt for you).  So, someone who runs around indescriminately whacking people puts himself in a bit of debt that will be harder to pay off once he finnally takes it on the chin (and killing someone with alot of debt should be worth a bit).

One character per account should be less of an issue because you can choose to re-incarnate as a different profession, number of skill/talent points would stay with the "soul", but a particular incarnation could be of any class/skill point selection (also leaning toward skill progression being use-based rather then selected.  Only selection would be at game start and at re-incarnation points).

[StGabe]

PD doesn't work for persistent worlds.  Sorry, Bartle was wrong.

Lots of people like the idea of permadeath but almost no one likes actually playing it in an MMO.  It's just one of those "story" things that sounds a lot better than it is when comes time to actually play.  The only context where permadeath is going to work, for the forseeable future, is in a game where you can control your environment (like Diablo 2) or a game where you can play a full and fulfilling life of your character in one sitting (like Nethack).  Personally I would like to see more games like the latter.  I think the only way to get at some of these "story" elements that people want so badly is to make characters cheap with short lifespans but in a world that is very replayable.  You can make an epic run on the dragon before finally running out of luck ... then put your name down on a high score list, post the story on a forum, whatever, and then roll up a new character the next day.

Gabe.

[Pococurante]

Well yes and no.  I've typically had zero tolerance for PD.  But that's because PD is absolute and I lose my investment in my toon.

I've tried for years to graft a "Great House" story element to my characters.  This worked in UO where I could give all slots the same last name but of course falls down because each slot is a static toon.  It falls down in WoW because I can't give surnames at all.

But PD in a game where I'm not just investing in a single character but in family lineage then this concept carries over well.  More clearly one's toon could PD only to be replaced by the eldest child or sibling or whatever.  So while it's an inconvenience that Eric the Red falls in that epic battle it just means I reconstitute to Leif Eric-Son who has been in a passive skills training mode for just such eventualities.  The toons share surnames and physical features so it is no more confusing to the players around me than it is IRL.

Setting aside PD I'd still like to have a family lineage model in my xxxRPGs.

[Sairon]

If I would have perma death in a game I would try to cheat it. For example if the player is close to dying, pump up his evades and resists with out him knowing it. Chances are he will survive and just think he got über lucky.

[Samwise]

My theory is that if you're invested in the world as a whole rather than your particular character, permadeath wouldn't suck and could actually enhance the experience.

No MMOG currently in existence permits this, because a character's actions are seldom allowed to affect anything beyond that character in a permanent fashion.  If a character suffers PD, nothing of that character is left, so you naturally feel like you've lost something.  If characters left a legacy of some sort (the family lineage thing is one way of doing that, I guess, though if your character dies and is promptly reborn as someone nearly identical but with a different first name, I don't see how it's much different from not having PD at all), you might not feel so cheated by PD.

The best idea I've had yet for a game along these lines would be a MMOG where the central goal would be to avert the world's destruction (Lovecraft could be a good setting for this - every month a new cult tries to bring about the destruction of the world, and the players have to track them down and stop them before the month is out or the server is wiped).  Make the ability of characters to help towards that goal not completely gated by level - characters that survive long enough to gain levels/skills will have an easier time of things than repeated "zergs" of low level characters, but if your high level character dies you won't need to "grind up" a new high level character in order to continue the work of that character either.

I think this'd be fun as hell, but I'm not holding my breath for anyone to take a plunge on a game where the main hook is having the world wiped out if you lose.

[Yegolev]

Putting PD in today's MOG is just a gimick.  Diku is inherently dangerous and the formula works; if this thread shows anything it is that PD is a bad idea for an EQ clone.  The hypothetical game needs to be designed with integral PD.  The downside here is that the game will have to be fun to play instead of just being a fun leveling system.

If it was my game, I'd use the good old character rolling system.  I'd give out a set of rolled stats on char creation and only allow one.  To get a new char, you just have to get your current one killed.  Of course that would just be an irritant to people who like to reroll until they get three 17's (you know who you are), forcing them to commit suicide immediately upon login, so this is probably not workable in an online game.  I'd have to add a REROLL button and would then have to resort to a fixed-point-total system.  Bleh.

Incidentally, it seems like if you just make the game world longer/larger than a player's lifespan, you don't have to worry about an end game so much.

[Sairon]

Btw, while not an MMORPG, if you're looking for some of thrills of perma death and don't care about graphics: http://www.t-o-m-e.net. It's a pretty fun game if you take some time to learn it. Some hints which even in the help wasn't all that aparant, w for equiping stuff, and whatever you do don't forget to use the torches when you're dungeon crawling. Also take maximum number of quests when you're asked.

[Samwise]

The downside here is that the game will have to be fun to play instead of just being a fun leveling system.

QFE.  That's why PD works in PnP games but not MMORPGs.  PnP games are both fun to play and sufficiently well-designed that characters don't die due to circumstances that are completely beyond their control.  MMORPGs are tedious yet capriciously punishing grinds.  The only reason to keep playing one is that the end is in sight.

[Typhon]

Apologies for the Necro Post, but I didn't want to continue screwing with DarkSign's NPC Vendor post and I remembered that there was a Permadeath post at some point in the past

A death 'penalty' where you respawn in the underworld and have to fight your way back to the surface could be fun, so long as you can return to the point where you went under... so to speak.

I've had a very similar idea for some time, but in the context of quasi perma death.  What I'm trying to achieve is a system where players want their characters to live/succeed, and will try like hell to keep their players alive.  But, at the same time they also understand that the day will come when their characters will die, which is somewhat ok, because when that day comes they also gain something which they otherwise would not have been able to gain without dying (but they gain more if their current character his done well).

The idea is that players create avatars, and avatars are used to spawn player characters.  Avatars have a more complex set of data, tracked at both the character level, and the avatar level as follows;

• Experience - determines your current character's level
• Renown - is what makes you as a player want to take chances/play heroically.  With high renown you can buy/get better stuff while alive, and you achieve an otherwise unreachable social standing upon rebirth.
  
• Essence - (think Avatar experience) determines character stats upon rebirth (or it could determine character level upon rebirth, if we are doing a diku, and the early game is boring) - essentially rewards a player for playing the game and helps make character death a different sort of experience.
  
• Karma - is essentially faction for your avatar.  Character has faction with mortal npcs.  Avatar has karma with non-mortal npcs.  A way for the game to track which non-mortal factions you have pissed off/pleased in previous incarnations
  

A bit complicated, but I hope you see where I'm going.

So, with all that said, when your character dies, he dies.  Depending on what religion/factions you help or are affiliated with, you have some options on how to return.

• Resurrection - given to new avatars to get them acclimated with the game and given as a reward when completing some important task for a non-mortal faction.
• Reincarnation - You spawn as a new character.  It's what you do in most cases.
• Revenant - if player character really pisses you off when ganking you, you can respawn as a revenant and hunt them down.  When you exact your revenge, you must reincarnate.  Also, you expend essence (avatar experience) while doing so, and if you don't manage to kill your target prior to burning through all your essence, you also must reincarnate but with no essence - your are essentially a level 1 character.  I'm thinking different servers will have different rates of burn on essence.  High burn rate favors a more murderous style of play, low burn rate fosters a "carebear" server.  If you are ganked by a revenant you cannot go revenant.
• Undeath - your typical ghoul, vampire, etc.  Essentially a way to play the bad guy for awhile.  Possibility for some servers to have this as not optional (server is a "living versus the dead" rules server).
• Lycanthrope - your typical werewolf.  Another way to play the bad guy.  A variant, probably something to add in an expansion.
• Spirit - A spirit is what you are before you pick any of the above.  You are an insubstantial ghost.  I'm also thinking there should be a long-shot (or maybe just expensive) option of trying to return from the from the after world.  It should be hard and/or expensive, but the player should have some way of returning to a character that was very close to reaching some goal - putting the character advancement before the avatar advancement in special situations

(Sorry for the long post)

I've played around with ideas similar to this, but never to this depth--pretty interesting stuff, and I can see it being fun to play, although with this system I'd suggest it needs to be much harder to die in "normal play".

That's hard to justify in many games, but think about your standard "raid wipe" scenario. Suddenly, your entire guild goes from high powered living characters to a bunch of spirits, to (whatever choice is made by each player). Not saying the system is faulty or won't work, but some things to consider.

First serious approach to making perma-death less idiotic (from the player's perspective) and more fun at the same time I think I've ever seen.

For some reason, I'm reading this stuff and thinking the correlation between a pilot and a mech.  If your mech is blown up, your pilot statistics are kept, but your machine is lost, and you have to rebuild it.  EVE seems to use a system similar to what you have, though pilot death can mean skill loss if preventative measures aren't put into place.

I'm in the process of moving out of my house, and I found all my old Mech Warrior II boxes (Mech II + expansions).  I loved that game, and I've been wondering why no one has created a Mech Warrior MMO.  I'd play that in a minute.

[...] it needs to be much harder to die in "normal play".

That was my initial thinking as well, but I think for this system to work the game cannot be another WoW.  There are options;

• Make the player associate more with the avatar then with the character - The Mech Warrior game would be an interesting example of this (would be very cool to have big guilds comprise the clans/big factions, and smaller guilds/solo players comprise the mercenaries).
• Make it likely that a character can escape from a battle that is going bad, but at the same time, make the rewards for victory in a battle that is going bad much better (using the renown mechanic again).  I think this means that the end game would not be a raiding game, which hints at a PvP game.  Which seems like it would add morale into the game - if you can make it look like your side is overwhelming, some players might break and run.  Which suggests the possibility of adding a bluffing factor to battles.
• come up with another, less permanent means of failure that is the common scenario, and give the player plenty of heads up when they are entering situations where they might face character perma-death.  I'm not a big fan of this option, it has too much of a "training wheels" feel to it.  Although, if I understand EVE correctly, that seems to be the approach they have taken

That's hard to justify in many games, but think about your standard "raid wipe" scenario. Suddenly, your entire guild goes from high powered living characters to a bunch of spirits, to (whatever choice is made by each player). Not saying the system is faulty or won't work, but some things to consider.

"a bunch of spirits" suggests another option - spirits can band together to make returning from death easier.  Sounds very unfun (similar to a corpse run), but maybe something can be done to make it worthwhile/interesting (possibly with limiting the number of times a character can return from death).  Something like a change in character stats, or the addition of an ability to see spirits, something to add flavor rather then real character power (I'm also thinking your hair goes completely white after returning from the dead, and no character can choose white hair at character creation - little flavor touches to make it interesting).

[cmlancas]

I think you have it backwards.  Have the entire game use permadeath, and naturally designed for such.  Upon reaching a milestone, perhaps a final quest or something, move the character to a non-permadeath server.  This could even be a different world instead of merely a copy of the "mortal realm".  I stole this idea from a game I used to play.

Was it a MUD? :P

[LK]

I'm in the process of moving out of my house, and I found all my old Mech Warrior II boxes (Mech II + expansions).  I loved that game, and I've been wondering why no one has created a Mech Warrior MMO.  I'd play that in a minute.

Give Chromehounds on 360 a whirl and let me know.

[Yegolev]

I think you have it backwards.  Have the entire game use permadeath, and naturally designed for such.  Upon reaching a milestone, perhaps a final quest or something, move the character to a non-permadeath server.  This could even be a different world instead of merely a copy of the "mortal realm".  I stole this idea from a game I used to play.

Was it a MUD? :P

Multiplayer but not a Dungeon.  Arena combat.  An arcane set of conditions could be met and your fighter would be granted immortality and sent off to fight against other immortals.