WoW forums: Should dying equal exp deductions?

Given that Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft MMORPG is known for its difficult instances and quests, dying in-game isn’t as frustrating compared to other MMORPGs. If anything, it’s easy – you die, you can just walk back to your corpse, revive, and suffer a set percent durability reduction to your gear. The latter depends heavily on how you die, but even large reductions are at least repairable.

Aside from finding your way back to your character’s corpse, there’s also getting back by way of the graveyard’s spirit healers and/or your resident healer’s resurrect spell. As said earlier, while the process seems time-consuming, it’s nothing that bothersome (unless you’re in a bugged area).

With that in mind, we got wind of a discussion taking place at the WoW official forums regarding the matter of character death. As Huve stated in the thread, he believes that the game should deduct experience points from guys who die. He explained that such a policy would weed out the bad players, as their constant dying will force them to learn how to use their character properly, or risk getting stuck at the lower levels for a very, very long time. As Huve elaborated:

The only people this change would affect are those people who have a low level of understanding of their class. These are the same people who are complaining about instances such as Shadow Labyrinth and Black Morass being too difficult. Honestly, nothing in this game is hard, and people who don’t know how to advance should be forced to learn how rather than moving forward anyway, even though they don’t have a clue.

There were plenty of reactions, mostly criticisms of Huve’s comment. Some posters argued that doing so would make the exploration of Azeroth far too risky to invest in. A second argument discussed causes of character death beyond the player’s control – what if the character died not because of poor judgement on their part (Though the game has its fair share of bad players), but because of a server connection problem… just as a high level mob got wind of them?

These were some of the more valid arguments we picked up from the thread, although given that we’ve had our share of playing MMORPGs with XP deductions as a “death penalty,”  some of us here can’t help but agree with these counter-points. What about you guys – what’s your say on the matter?

Via WoW Forums

Given that Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft MMORPG is known for its difficult instances and quests, dying in-game isn’t as frustrating compared to other MMORPGs. If anything, it’s easy – you die, you can just walk back to your corpse, revive, and suffer a set percent durability reduction to your gear. The latter depends heavily on how you die, but even large reductions are at least repairable.

Aside from finding your way back to your character’s corpse, there’s also getting back by way of the graveyard’s spirit healers and/or your resident healer’s resurrect spell. As said earlier, while the process seems time-consuming, it’s nothing that bothersome (unless you’re in a bugged area).

With that in mind, we got wind of a discussion taking place at the WoW official forums regarding the matter of character death. As Huve stated in the thread, he believes that the game should deduct experience points from guys who die. He explained that such a policy would weed out the bad players, as their constant dying will force them to learn how to use their character properly, or risk getting stuck at the lower levels for a very, very long time. As Huve elaborated:

The only people this change would affect are those people who have a low level of understanding of their class. These are the same people who are complaining about instances such as Shadow Labyrinth and Black Morass being too difficult. Honestly, nothing in this game is hard, and people who don’t know how to advance should be forced to learn how rather than moving forward anyway, even though they don’t have a clue.

There were plenty of reactions, mostly criticisms of Huve’s comment. Some posters argued that doing so would make the exploration of Azeroth far too risky to invest in. A second argument discussed causes of character death beyond the player’s control – what if the character died not because of poor judgement on their part (Though the game has its fair share of bad players), but because of a server connection problem… just as a high level mob got wind of them?

These were some of the more valid arguments we picked up from the thread, although given that we’ve had our share of playing MMORPGs with XP deductions as a “death penalty,”  some of us here can’t help but agree with these counter-points. What about you guys – what’s your say on the matter?

Via WoW Forums