Originally posted by NeoKyosuke18

Thinking about this question has sparked my mind. 

I doubt you will ever have an mmo w/ permadeath per say, but it wouldn't be too far fetched to for an mmo to implement a zone or battleground so to speak that when you enter, upon your death, you cannot continue in that zone/instance till theres only 1 man left or until a time period is reached.  Make it that the zone would have great rewards the further into it you went, but once your dead you cannot reenter until it's reset or completed. 

 

The idea is similiar to a raid style instance but once your dead your dead until it's reset.

 

 

I'd have to say that this is a brilliant idea. This could definetly work. Sounds quite challenging.

First of all, y'all are a bit behind the times. Permadeath has been done several times now.

To start with, permadeath in ORPG's wasn't an idea invented by sadistic developers or foolish players who wouldn't actually play it. Permadeath was invented by players who actually played it. The first mainstream ORPG with permadeath was Diablo 1. Despite the fact that b.net D1 became a shitty hackfest, the better legit player groups were damn fun to be around. No such thing as ladder or ladder resets in D1, and there was only one effective class for legits who wanted to do Hell dif, so we were all sorcs with mostly the same gear. Leveling also started to offer very little return past a point in D1. Once you hit the late 30's, you were 99% as powerful as you could ever be.

We invented our own game modes to pass the time, eventually. Ironman was seriously great fun. Everybody made a brand new character. You could only use what you started with and what you found on the ground. No shops. Even the crappiest magic drops became precious things. You'd try to go as far as you can. If you died, too bad so sad. No respawning, just praying for a player to res you. That was probably among the most fun single-session ORPG play I've had.

That's really the underlying idea you are all failing to grasp. There will never be a pure "permadeath" MMORPG or even ORPG which is AAA quality, not without it being so fundamentally warped that it ceases to be permadeath. No dev studio will put the time into developing a AAA game and add a feature which will cut them off at the knees. There will, however, be "hardcore" game modes and servers. If that fails, there will be voluntary permadeath guilds. There is most definitely a demand for it. Diablo 2 did it. Hellgate did it. Mythos did it. None was a persistent world, granted. That doesn't mean it hasn't been done in a persistent world too, though.

Shaiya did it with its Ultimate server. Dofus did it with its Heroic server. I'm not going to suggest Shaiya. If you can live with Dofus's art style, though, which is probably the only MMORPG which is intentionally "cartoony", then there's a very good game beneath. I have to warn you about Dofus, though. It's not a game which is terribly forgiving. You can forget about running from battle. If you pick the wrong fight, and nobody jumps in to save you, you're screwed if you're playing the hardcore server. You better be damn prepared before you jump in or quickly find some friends who can show you how to play. Dofus does have some excellent features on its Hardcore server, though.

Another option is joining DDO and finding a permadeath guild. There are several very active permadeath players in this site's DDO forums. Just go there and ask them. It's voluntary in DDO, though. Then again, that might be a good thing. You might realize permadeath is simply not for you, at which point you could retire from the guild and play regularly instead of deleting your char.

There's another thing you all fail to realize. There's no magical solution in the rules that needs to be invented. Devs have already come up with, and implemented, rules to soften the blow on hardcore server. The biggest one, which I imagine will be found in all future "Hardcore" implementations in persistent-world MMO's, is XP acceleration, which is mostly done two ways. One is a blanket increase of XP gain. Another is a bit more nuanced. Lets say you reach lvl 50 on a hardcore server and die. Some games would give you a XP multiplier on any future chars until you hit 50 with them.

People who think permadeath is impractical, not fun, or simply the delusional fantasy of a self-described hardcore nutcase are sadly ignorant of the reality, probably because they never tried it themselves. If anything, it was invented as single-session fun by the most casual players.

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

You guys haven't been paying attention if you think there are no games with Perma Death.

 

If that's what you're into, go play Shaiya. Hardcore created characters get the most stat points per level up, but if they are not revived within 5 minutes they are permanently destroyed.

Shaiya is another Korean item shop grinder. It sells anti permadeath potions for real money and you better believe everyone who plays a permadeath character is carrying those potions around so it is false that Shaiya has permadeath.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

yes there is.

it is called Real Life and was published around 100.000 years ago.

some think though you can play on after the "game over" screen appears.

 

Pretty sure that came out a lot longer ago than that :p