Damion Schubert On The Death Penalty

The death penalty in MMORPGs has always been a hot topic among players. From the legendary corpse runs in EverQuest, to the light-hearted romp through the Azerothian ghost-world in World of Warcraft, death penalties in MMORPGs are all over the map.

Today on the official TOR forums, BioWare Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert weighed in with his philosophy on the need to balance the severity of the death penalty with fun, and not placing artificial barriers in front of the player, keeping them from doing what they want to do:

Ultimately, we want players to play the freakin’ game. We want them to group. We want them to deck out in their gear. We want them to experiment with builds. We want them to explore the nether regions of all the planets. We want to make really hard stuff for them. And we most assuredly want them to seek out challenges bigger than themselves.

Schubert goes on to say that just because the death penalty may not be harsh, it doesn’t mean the game can’t be challenging:

But I would seperate the idea of ‘challenge’ and ‘punishment’. I would rather our challenges be gated by whether or not you have the skill, the gear, and the teamwork to succeed than whether or not you have the credits and/or time to wait out the forced downtime in between, you know, the fun part.

While he doesn’t offer specifics on how the “death” system will work in TOR, we can garner enough from his post to understand that they want players to play the game, not be punished for doing so.

So what’s your take? Should there be material loss to your character when you die? Or should there be an insta-ressurection button? Maybe something in-between?  Let us know! And you can jump into the discussion on the official forums right here.