Yes I think it works very well indeed, BM, although it was a strange
concept at first!  I love it now though  :)  Even better, there's no
monthly fee.

On a more general note, pertaining to the main thread topic, I played
the demo of EQ2 and I found it fairly poor. I realize this was a demo,
but there is no way in hell I would shell out and buy EQ2 on the basis
of this crummy demo.

I wouldn't mind trying WoW out, but there is no demo currently
available in my region, as far as I know.  No way am I paying for the
game, then finding I don't like that either, lol.  The reason I am
wary of trying it is from the input of online friends (they have tried
WoW and EQ2, but cancelled their accounts and prefer to play either
Guild Wars/Anarchy Online and/or EQ) who say the game has more idiots
per square inch than in any other game they have ever played - sounds
a bit bitter to me, but there might be an element of truth to it, heh.
Several have also said it is FAR too easy to solo up to high levels in
Wow.  Still, I'd love to see a demo of it, to make my own mind up.

Until something else comes along, I'll stick to EQ, Guild Wars and
maybe some Delta Force Online.

Palindrome

I think the current arrangement in EQ is a good balance in this regard
(though I know some people point to it as another "training wheels"
element in the game).  If you die at a low level, there's no penalty
other than the time to get back to whatever you were doing (and maybe
get fresh buffs and re-memorize spells).  After level 10, you do lose
experience (but not much until mid to high levels), but can get most of
it back via resurrection if you can find the corpse, and you have to get
to the corpse to regain your gear.  It used to be the big screw was if
you couldn't find (or reach) your corpse, because then the experience
loss was permanent and your items were gone.  Yes, it made players more
careful about dying, which is good, but stuff happens, and people did
occasionally lose all their gear.

A while back, they added Shadowrest.  If you died and didn't retrieve
the corpse, the corpse would appear in Shadowrest a week later and you
could at least get your gear back.  (It would be too late to rez.)  But
being unable to play your character for a week sucks, as does losing xp
permanently.

With the introduction of the Guild Lobby in the previous expansion(*),
players have a reasonable choice.  They can summon their corpse there
for a modest fee (based on level) and get it rezzed and get their gear.
But doing so means they're back in civilisation, and getting back to
whatever they were doing can take a while.  So people often still prefer
to bind closer to where they're hunting, with the intent to run back in
and get their corpse "in situ" if they die.  But if things go sour, you
have the Guild Lobby to fall back on so the penalty isn't as big as it
used to be.

    -- Don.

(*) Do I win anything for being the first to refer to Dragons of Norrath
as the "previous expansion"? :-)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- See the a.g.e/EQ1 FAQ at http://www.iCynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm
--
-- Sukrasisx, Monk 57 on E. Marr       Note: If you reply by mail,
-- Terrwini, Druid 52 on E. Marr       I'll get to it sooner if you
-- Wizbeau, Wizard 36 on E. Marr       remove the "hyphen n s"
-- Teviron, Knight 25 on E. Marr

It was indeed very annoying.  You've just done something that was beyond
you, and died.  You've been smacked with a heavy XP penalty, and have
learned your lesson.  So what do you have to do?

You have to go back to the place that you've just learned you should not
go, and you have to do it without your best equipment (or without any
equipment if you don't have a backup set).

<bealrabbitslayer@hotmail.com> wrote:

Very few raids in EQ involve certain death (if you're winning that is).
Sony actually left the "deathtouch" concept behind, or rather, they made it
something you could strategize past unlike the original implementation of
it.  Current "deathtouch" fights generally have a delayed and "fixable"
implementation so that people only get insta-killed if they don't do
whatever is necessary to stop it from happening.

Why?

There are likely some inaccuracies below... but the gist holds true.

Original game had corpse locate spells/songs & 90% rez. Losing a corpse
was a real concern for many players in the very beginning. Although by
the time Kunark arrived there were enough 50ths wandering around that
getting a rescue was trivial; even Permafrost/LGuk/SolB were perma-
camped with waiting lists for dragons... if you lost your corpse you
could have just asked for help, and likely gotten it. The only exception
was the planes.

Kunark added summon corpse spell lines, and 96% rez, as well as giving
Necros Rez.

So by Kunark losing a valuable corpse was only really a concern in the
planes and VP. Although you did occasionally need a 'CR recovery
team'... a porter to get you out of a one way zone, a summoner to get
the corpse over, and ideally a rezzer to get you your xp back, and
perhaps even a cc or dps class for places like HS with aggro mobs right
at the zone in. Getting a full CR crew did present a legitimate
obstacle...but that's what guilds are for. You really couldn't actually
lose your corpse unless you were a very infrequent or antisocial player,
but yeah, it did take a fair chunk of effort/time to get it out of some
zones.

Velious & Luclin didn't really change anything. Although Pali's were
granted rezes with Luclin (iirc??). I didn't play a pali, but I thought
the pali and lowbie clr rezes were first available in shadowhaven.

PoP added graveyards. It didn't affect the rest of the game, but you
couldn't really lose a corpse in PoP itself.

With LDoN instances spat out corpses, as you noted. Again the mechanic
was limited to LDoN.

I beleive ShadowRest showed up sometime after LDoN. ShadowRest
permanently eliminated lost corpses with a 1 week wait. 0 risk of losing
corpses.

DoN made it so that for a few pp you didn't have to wait 1 week.

Veteran Rewards gave you another option if you qualified.

Its been reasonably easy to get your corpse out of *almost* anywhere for
a very long time, and for quite a while now there has been no risk at
all.

It really can't get much easier now.

<reply_in_group@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

There was no "additional loss".  Leaving the rest of your post in as it's a
pretty good explanation of "death has always been a flat equation.  It's the
actual experience required per level that had bumps".  =)