Everyone says that the problem is that death is far too common for perma-death to work. I say it's not a bug, it's a feature!

Say, every character lives for 72 game-play hours (wall clock time, but only counts while playing that character). Sound short? Maybe, for those who play 24/7, but if you play 2.5 hours a day, that's nearly a month, and we'll assume the content designers have things like that in mind. (In fact, I wonder if 72 is too long for this idea) However, life's tough, so few characters will reach the ripe old age of 72 hours.

Reaching different mile stones will attach certain awards to your account for all to see. Things like number of characters that lived for 24, 48, 72 hours, names of the three longest lived characters, number of characters that reached level 5, 10, 15,... names of the three highest leveled characters, etc. There would also be a list of the accounts with the highest levels, most quests completed, etc.

If you don't like attaching it to the account ("That's OOC!" Yeah, well, so are most things in a MMORPG) just say that it's a race that does the death/birth thing like a phoenix.

You die so often, you don't have as much lost when you start over. It motivates like tetris, minesweeper, snake in that you can keep trying to get that one step further (Maybe I can beat Minesweeper in under X time, maybe I can reach level 21 this time). Since nearly all players are low level, content creation will be more focused (i.e. more content for all, which will help to keep things more interesting for all).

It also allows people to actually reach legendary status. Many posts here talk about MMORPG character acheiving legendary status. It usually doesn't happen because everyone is a legendary hero, or would be if they lived in our world (that's why trade skills tend to be unpopular). But, if most people can't reach level 20 in the time allowed, then whoever does best the giant (who's level 30) will be well known. It'll also add a mystique to "high level" areas ("They say nobody who strays into the forest comes back alive" Ooooooooooo... scary [evil][lol]).

Are we even necessarily talking MMORPG?

I think too many people are hung up on the idea that somehow permanent death will simply be tacked onto existing MMORPG games. That's impossible. Current MMORPG games were not designed with permanent death in mind. You have to start from the ground up.

Playing Diablo II on a HardCore character really adds a new feel to the game. I had a very nice ice mage going until I met, is it duriel in the desert temple?, the spider like dude. Well, I've never cried harder in my entire life (Except maybe when my Paladin died at Level 46).

I have been a great fan of permadeath. I had the idea back when I played my first MMORPG Ultima Online. I know that a very large group of people hate the idea of a difficult game, and they wish to run crazy not caring much about death. Here is what permadeath brings to the table for us that love the idea. To myself permadeath is one of the greatest tools in getting players to role-play.

* It brings back classic pen-and-paper role playing ideas. ROLE PLAY!

* Permadeath, it adds value to your character. It gives you character life (erm... or death)

* ok so I didn't list a lot of points but them to points I did list are extremely important.

I wish all the MMORPGs out their would have an ADVANCED/HARDCORE server that added permadeath. I would play ;)

I have a good idea for permadeath. It is mainly for a single-player CRPG

The way it works is, once your char. dies it is dead (of course) Yet, every effect and action that character took leaves a lasting effect on the game world (would have to be very open ended) You create a new character and continue in the world. Almost feels like a sim :/ Not sure.

Permadeath will find wider acceptance once you've eliminated lag and griefers.

Quote:

Original post by RKillian Permadeath will find wider acceptance once you've eliminated lag and griefers.

Which is basically never.

Although that was the point I was trying to make, I _do_ believe lag will eventually cease to be the problem it is today.

I would recommend that everyone would play dungeon crawl before talking about this topic.
http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/

Whey you meet a centaur it's as bad as it's not funny.