Should you lose experience when you die?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Apr 7th 2007 at 4:26PM
In the World of Warcraft, the cost of dying is really pretty minimal. Yes, there's the trouble of running from the graveyard to your corpse and yes you take 10% durability damage to all of your equipped gear (the cost goes up to 25% if you need to spirit rez). So you lose a minute or two of time running back to your corpse eating/drinking/bandaging, and rebuffing yourself before getting right back to where you left off. In terms of gameplay, you're not really set back at all -- you don't lose experience or levels from death. And sometimes death can even be beneficial to your character: say, by killing one of a pack of three monsters (dying in the process), and then coming back to take out the second and the third. You've just managed to kill a group of monsters larger than you could have killed alone -- all by benefit of the death system!
But the penalty for death is so light that there's not really much reason to avoid it. Oh, I know the time spent in corpse runs adds up and the cost of repairing gear only gets higher and higher. But it's not the end of the world if you die -- and it's hardly even the end of your online character. And so there are some players who think the death penalty needs to be harsher. If death mattered, we'd all be playing more cautiously -- in fact, the difference in playstyle would make it a whole new game. But it would make the most difference in the raiding game -- I can't say I've ever learned an encounter without a few deaths. Losing experience or levels for wiping in a raid situation?
"Sorry everyone, I just leveled down to 69 from that wipe, have to go grind."
Ouch!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Chrispy Apr 7th 2007 4:49PM
SAGE!
Finnicks Daerkhiv Apr 7th 2007 4:50PM
Technically, if you Spirit Rez you lose 35% of your durability on equiped items, and 25% of durability on items in your inventory.
The 10% durability bonus on equippd items from death is applied at the point of death, if the killing blow was dealt by an NPC.
The 25% you take to ALL items (invluding inventory) at the Spirit Healer is in addition to that.
As for the topic: I think that WoW's relatively lax death policy is one of the huge reasons it's become so massively popular. I played UO for about a week on a friend's account to try it out, and I never went back. The first time I spent two hours trying to get an item and then got ganked by some jerk player in the woods who looted it off my corpse, I lost all interest in UO.
Method Apr 7th 2007 5:01PM
DAoC had a pretty nice system:
You never lost a level
Lvl cap was 50, so lvls 40-50 had "mini-dings", when you reached 50% of the level, you could no longer drop below it. Each death you lost a chunk of xp, and it left a grave where you died, and /praying at the grave gave you back a chunk of xp (around 3% of the 5% lost)
no money or item loss
if you got rezzed by a cleric, you only lost half the xp you would have otherwise, and you also get "resurrection sickness" (similar to wows)
Was nice, but the game also had a MUCH slower progression. amount of time to get to 50, i could make 2-3 60s in wow
Like finnicks said, I think it has aided those new to the genre, but I can't help but think it should have more effects, something like just getting the rez illness every time you raise from the dead.
Rich Apr 7th 2007 5:14PM
Everything in WoW is time, whether it's a ghost run or losing 5 minutes' worth of XP.
That said, this idea sucks.
Bobby Hansen Apr 7th 2007 5:20PM
Blizzard does this, and 1/4 of the subscriber base quits in the first month.
Death should be a realtively light thing, and I think the current system is perfect. Money, not experience.
I hope Blizzard isn't listening. I want to enjoy my game, not living in fear of losing my hard-won EXP to, say, the wolf I didn't see in the Badlands.
Kyle Apr 7th 2007 5:28PM
I hate the idea of losing experience when you die. Yes, there should be some penalties (and I think that the current penalties are more than enough), but not enough that you might level down if you're not careful. That's overboard.
At most, perhaps something like an experience debt (Anarchy Online had something like this, if memory serves). If you die, you incurred a "debt" and some (not all) experience you gained for a while would be set aside to "pay it back." When the debt was paid in full, you got 100% of your experience again. Something like that, perhaps, but in general I think the death penalties are fine enough.
forzaq8 Apr 7th 2007 5:30PM
i think the death system is fine as it is
any harsher and you will not find any pickup groups at all , hell even guild groups will be hard to get
not to mention raids
Mats Apr 7th 2007 5:32PM
Vanguard had a lot of there "hardcoreness" based on the penalty of death.
And now they are removing it, so it's more like WoW's death system.
I guess they figured out that paying costumers don't like being kicked in the balls when there character dies.
Horatius Apr 7th 2007 5:35PM
This was one thing I didn't like way back when I played EverQuest. Repeatedly dieing would cost more and more experience to the point that it'd just make me lose interest. I much prefer paying out for repairs in WoW over paying out in grind time in EQ, and would be perfectly happy if the system remained the same.
Aladek Apr 7th 2007 6:51PM
haha, at times I actually miss the old EQ xp loss...
In wow, if you put enough time in, no matter how slowly you kill and get xp you Will level.
In EQ you could put a ton of time in, but if you keep dying your not gonna level, plain and simple.
Just remember if your going to start complaining about "all the stupid n00b 70's that don't know how to play." That's what happens when the death penalty is light.
ekes Apr 7th 2007 5:49PM
It's a casual game. Therefor the death system is casually tailored for people.
I sometimes wish the 25% loss of xp was still in WoW when you rez at the healers. It's just annoying when people drop out of instances because they are too lazy to head back. Before when the rule was still in, people would run back to the instance and finish it.
Nigel Holderby Apr 8th 2007 12:57AM
I should bitch-slap the person who thought losing XP when you die was a good idea.
One reason WoW is so wildly popular is the fact that casual players can actually see progress in the short amount of time they have to play. If Blizz started taking things away during that short time, I know I certainly would reconsider my spare time.
daniel Apr 7th 2007 5:56PM
i just spend the night wiping in kara trying to learn the encounters, it's enough with repair bills, respawns, running back and rebuffing. i think an xp loss would make it even harder to get into raiding, no one wants to lose xp because your group is learning the encounters.
Chris Apr 7th 2007 6:10PM
Dumbest. Idea. Ever. Evar!
david.mcdaniel Apr 7th 2007 6:26PM
Blizzard talked about this prior to the game going live. The intentionally made the penalty light so I doubt they will ever change it.
Their idea was that death should not be a large penalty so that a) you had fun instead of it furthering your grind (perhaps this is one reason they are so huge) and b) so that you *would* try things that might kill you rather than being scared. Again, so you could have fun.
Believe it or not most every decision I've seen them make enhances some significant portion of the game players gameplay somehow. Forum whiners not withstanding.
Jared Apr 7th 2007 6:34PM
I think you should gain XP when you die, because in life you learn something from every mistake and failure.
Bloodshed Apr 7th 2007 6:34PM
I think the 8+ hours of leveling in endgame sucks enough, no need to add more time, (and what happens when you die 3 times successively?), I had enough of that when I quit EQ1. If you want harsher death penalties try Everquest, you lose exp ,and even levels if I'm not mistaken, from dying there.
Thumbs down
Tainted_Mage Apr 28th 2007 9:18AM
That would suck cause If the Death Penalty was higher well then soo many people would start geting screwed over in PvP like for the ones where one side Tottally owns like Alliance at AV on our server
someone Apr 7th 2007 6:41PM
Maybe its not a hard price to pay for carebears, but hey if you want to pay my 30G in repair bills every raid night(4 of em), be my guest. Because between farming rep, gear, and mats for consumables(mana pot, Oil, Flaks, Elixirs, food) you know I just haven't been pushed hard enough by this game.
Seriously anyone who even has to think about this being a good idea is decked out in greens as their end game gear.
grorgx Apr 7th 2007 6:43PM
ok in maplestory (fun but not that well known) when you died you rezed at the closest town and lost like 5% exp (couldn't go down a level) and what ended up happeneing was you couldn't do anything risky unless you had just leveled so you wouldn't loose exp.
If the same thing happens in WoW /bye to all dungeons and raids as we know them. Fewer and fewer people will want to risk lossing a big chunk of play time worth of exp just to have a chance at getting an item. i think it's good how it is right now, paying the repair bill and walking back is a good thing, not the bad but not that good.
if blizz changes it so we loose xp then /bye to wow