My first post but I am a veteran online gamer. I started playing with Ultima Online when it first came out and I have played several, including: Asherons Call, Earth and Beyond, Eve, Horizons, City of Heroes, WoW, EQ2, Anarchy Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, D&D Online, Meridian 59 and a couple others. I enjoyed them all to some extent but I have to say my biggest thrills were playing Ultima Online in it's infancy being chased by a pk'er, knowing that death meant a loss of potentially everything. (By the pk'er or by the dirty old dial up connection that I had to use). Yes, it SUCKED to die back then but thats what made it a rush and made you hunch over your monitor till yours eyes bugged out of your head. Asherons Call was also a favourite, death meant the loss of xp, stats AND a couple pieces of your good gear. It meant running back to your body to try and reclaim your stuff, and the thing that just killed you was usually still standing by your body. All the other games I have played have minor inconvenient death penalties but nothing like those two games.

Does anyone know any good games that offer a similar experience? I don't care if it's sci-fi or fantasy or whatever. Just a good game that makes you pay attention to death and what it brings.

Thanks for any help!

DD

EVE online, but it can be hard to get into

If Darkfall lives up to the devs promises, it will deliver exactly this experience you crave.

Play UO on the Siege Perilous shard.

I second EVE Online. EVE molds men and mercilessly spits out those that can't handle loss. There is no MMO in existence more hardcore then EVE to my knowledge

Even in PVE- the penalties are nearly identical to PVP

==========

EQ2 used to be tough at launch. Beyond that, FFXI is something you should look into. Made famous for "Level Down!". Not sure if thats in your list of games you played

[Edit] I see you've played EVE. Wait and see if Darkfall comes out. Go to www.darkfallonline.com and hope beta comes out like rest of us. I have the feeling thats what you really want. Sorry man that's not much out there. In meanwhile perhaps some Indie MMO games like Wurm online, Starport, etc.

EvE and Lineage

i gotta say eve also, though i wish it were otherwise.

<modedit>

Eve.

To all you WoW players out there...picture killing someone, then taking all their epics...leaving them nakid. Also, if player goofed, imagine pushing them from L70, back to L60...having to regrind all over.

Only good thing about the death penalty in Eve, you will laugh at your next corpse walk in other games. Will seem like a walk in the park.

Originally posted by DoubleDown12

My first post but I am a veteran online gamer. I started playing with Ultima Online when it first came out and I have played several, including: Asherons Call, Earth and Beyond, Eve, Horizons, City of Heroes, WoW, EQ2, Anarchy Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, D&D Online, Meridian 59 and a couple others. I enjoyed them all to some extent but I have to say my biggest thrills were playing Ultima Online in it's infancy being chased by a pk'er, knowing that death meant a loss of potentially everything. (By the pk'er or by the dirty old dial up connection that I had to use). Yes, it SUCKED to die back then but thats what made it a rush and made you hunch over your monitor till yours eyes bugged out of your head. Asherons Call was also a favourite, death meant the loss of xp, stats AND a couple pieces of your good gear. It meant running back to your body to try and reclaim your stuff, and the thing that just killed you was usually still standing by your body. All the other games I have played have minor inconvenient death penalties but nothing like those two games.

Does anyone know any good games that offer a similar experience? I don't care if it's sci-fi or fantasy or whatever. Just a good game that makes you pay attention to death and what it brings.

Thanks for any help!

DD

 

 

Any game can have the harshest of death penalties, its up to you as the player to enforce it on yourself though.  Back when I actually played pen and paper D&D and AD&D, Champions, and a handful of other rpgs we had a very simple manner of handling death penalties.  If a character was taken to -20 hps, I think it was, or had had some other unrecoverable injury well... we had a steel trash bin next to the playing table.  We almost always gamed by candle light, and if our character had died well, we took the char. sheet lit it on fire and dropped it into the trash bin.

So, when you die in an mmo, just log out, go to the character screen and delete it. :)  Then you can reroll and be satisfied that you are truly hardcore :D

WurmOnline.   Skill loss, item loss, and if you can't defend your town 'storage' loss maybe even the town if you can't maintain it any more.

Originally posted by severius

Originally posted by DoubleDown12

My first post but I am a veteran online gamer. I started playing with Ultima Online when it first came out and I have played several, including: Asherons Call, Earth and Beyond, Eve, Horizons, City of Heroes, WoW, EQ2, Anarchy Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, D&D Online, Meridian 59 and a couple others. I enjoyed them all to some extent but I have to say my biggest thrills were playing Ultima Online in it's infancy being chased by a pk'er, knowing that death meant a loss of potentially everything. (By the pk'er or by the dirty old dial up connection that I had to use). Yes, it SUCKED to die back then but thats what made it a rush and made you hunch over your monitor till yours eyes bugged out of your head. Asherons Call was also a favourite, death meant the loss of xp, stats AND a couple pieces of your good gear. It meant running back to your body to try and reclaim your stuff, and the thing that just killed you was usually still standing by your body. All the other games I have played have minor inconvenient death penalties but nothing like those two games.

Does anyone know any good games that offer a similar experience? I don't care if it's sci-fi or fantasy or whatever. Just a good game that makes you pay attention to death and what it brings.

Thanks for any help!

DD

 

 

 

Any game can have the harshest of death penalties, its up to you as the player to enforce it on yourself though.  Back when I actually played pen and paper D&D and AD&D, Champions, and a handful of other rpgs we had a very simple manner of handling death penalties.  If a character was taken to -20 hps, I think it was, or had had some other unrecoverable injury well... we had a steel trash bin next to the playing table.  We almost always gamed by candle light, and if our character had died well, we took the char. sheet lit it on fire and dropped it into the trash bin.

So, when you die in an mmo, just log out, go to the character screen and delete it. :)  Then you can reroll and be satisfied that you are truly hardcore :D

You are not being helpful so please don't comment with stupid suggestions.
If you fail to understand the necessity of everyone on the same server playing under the same rules, circumstances, game mechanics,  in order to establish a fair level of competition, then I can't explain it to you, but please don't insult those of us who understand the realism and excitement factor that a mandatory harsh death penalty for all players creates.

Lineage, Eve and FFXI have relatively harsh death results.  I would say Lineage 2 is the worst unless they changed it.

EVE online now (sci fi space mmo)

Darkfall in the next few months

Both have significant death penalties and will def get your heart pounding.

Thanks for all your responses.

To be honest, I tried EVE as a demo and dropped it after a couple days. It was fairly complicated and I was in a bad mood. I will give the demo a full run this time and see what happens. I did try FFXI but I didn't love it. I think it may appeal to a younger audience then me as it has some cartoonish graphics. I also tried Lineage 2 and I really didn't like that game. Cartoonish and It was new and had a ton of bugs...

I'm going to look closer at this Wurm Online. Graphics look dated but if game play and content rock, I don't really care. I looked up Darkfall as well. It looks pretty interesting. No final release date yet though eh?

It's kind of sad/odd that there are a TON of online games out now and so little of them offer harsh death penalties. If anyone else has any suggestions I'd appreciate the advice. I was hoping Conan Online would offer the experience I was looking for but death is apparently a very minor setback in that game as well.

Thanks again everyone :)

DD

Originally posted by paulscott

WurmOnline.   Skill loss, item loss, and if you can't defend your town 'storage' loss maybe even the town if you can't maintain it any more.

isn't that the game where you get banned if you go around murdering people?

This MMORPG when you die, you permanently dies.

It is called Real Life.

Sorry, just had to do it. 

Originally posted by Neosai

This MMORPG when you die, you permanently dies.

It is called Real Life.

Sorry, just had to do it. 

i hate that game with a passion though.

To the OP, I am in the same boat as yourself.  I've been into MMO's for a few years now, and I wish there was something out there that was a bit more hardcore with the death penalty.  You will always get people saying that there is no mass appeal to perma-death games, or severe death penalties such as loss of equipment, loss of xp, etc, and that is fair enough.   However, where is the harm in having a special server set aside for the truly hardcore players (not that I am one, but I would still like to test my mettle in that environment).  They did it with Diablo 2, and it was a popular feature.  I bet loads of people would roll at least one alt in a hardcore server of their favourite game, even if it is just out of curiousity,

So far, I have only encountered perma-death in one game.  It is an asian grinder called Shaiya, and plays almost identical to Lineage 2, not only with very similar UI, but also near identical graphics.  But even here you have to wade through several lower settings before 'unlocking' the hardcore mode.  Once this is unlocked, and your character dies, you have a set amount of time to get rez'ed or you die permanently.

If you enjoy L2 (and I think you mentioned earlier that you did not like it) then this would have been a viable option for you.  That is, if you are prepared to grind out the characters to max level on lower settings to 'unlock' the option.

The free2play game Dofus is launching a herioc server, and it sounded really good,  However, I then found out that you have to be a subscriber to play on this server, and there is no way I am paying to play a free2play MMO.

So I guess I will have to rely on Darkfall, if it ever sees the light of day. (And I really do hope that it does)

As for the arguement which someone always comes out with in these discussions that you can just delete your own characters when you die, well that is not the same.  It has to be a level playing field if it is too mean anything, otherwise there is no point.  And if you have a dedicated server, then everyone know's how strict it is before hand.

If the OP, or anyone else for that matter, finds a game with perma-death, or a very steep death penalty (such as loss of all your equipment), could you let me know please?  Like you, I also tried Eve, and although I do not doubt that it is a great game, I just could not get into it.  So anyone have any other suggestions?

Originally posted by originalegg

EVE online now (sci fi space mmo)

Darkfall in the next few months

Both have significant death penalties and will def get your heart pounding.

Darkfall has this awesome feature. The game comes with electrodes that plug into your USB drive, and it won't let you log in unless you clamp the electrodes to your nipples.

When you die, the game delivers an electric shock to your nipples. The more times you die, the bigger the shock. This will revolutionize MMORPGs.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by originalegg

EVE online now (sci fi space mmo)

Darkfall in the next few months

Both have significant death penalties and will def get your heart pounding.

 

Darkfall has this awesome feature. The game comes with electrodes that plug into your USB drive, and it won't let you log in unless you clamp the electrodes to your nipples.

When you die, the game delivers an electric shock to your nipples. The more times you die, the bigger the shock. This will revolutionize MMORPGs.

I know some people that will keep zerging enemy lines.....

Definitely Eve Online.  If someone blows your ship away, you could lose tens of millions of ISK (in-game currency) if not hundreds of millions.  Then they scoop your cargo and any modules drifting about to stop you salvaging what you can, then they extract useful metals, etc. from the actual debris.  If they so wish they can blow away your escape pod, possibly costing you millions in cyborg Implants and killing your character.  If you were rash enough not to have an up to date clone (I've seen it happen, though it's hard to believe) you could lose skills that took days, weeks or even longer to learn....  in Real Time.

There was also that sayha F2P game where you could choose to be in perma-death risk by becoming stronger. Can get quite harsh if you get to develope that character.

Originally posted by Ephimero

There was also that sayha F2P game where you could choose to be in perma-death risk by becoming stronger. Can get quite harsh if you get to develope that character.

I think you might be meaning the same game as I mentioned in my post.  Shayia, or something like that (I can't spell it either, hehe).  Or if you are meaning a different game, then could you please add more detials?

Shaiya is another crappy asian item shop grinder and the item shop sells pills to prevent permadeath and you better believe that anyone who leveled up to a permadeath option character to receive the extra stats is using those pills. Therefore it is not a real permadeath game. Only games with mandatory permadeath without the ability to prevent it other than staying alive, qualify as a game with permadeath.

The one missing from your list was EQ1.

It isn't permadeath, and death is not as bad as it used to be, but it is still a very challenging MMO.