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Players’ characters I assume. I think this would be a much different and bigger story if they killed the players.
Sword Art Online.
I always considered MMOs a bit on the dangerous side. Grinding takes a toll on your body after a while.
Unfortunately, I am not immune either as I have been playing Diablo for years. Thankfully, it’s just seasonal grinding until I max my character and then I can go back to playing healthier games like Factorio, that absolutely hasn’t sucked 4000 hours out of my soul as payment.
(Long ago, you lost almost everything almost instantly on death. It completely sucked and really should’ve been changed sooner.)
I used to play in the long ago and let me tell you it created a whole new type of player, vultures.
The biggest quest at the time ended with you fighting a big green dragon (Elvarg). The dragon was behind a door and as long as you hadn’t beaten the dragon you could open the door to the dragons lair.
Outside the door were a bunch of skeletons and demons meant to make the area a challenge to get to, however many high level players camped in the area for XP and loot. So the skeletons and demons were constantly under attack and the area outside was actually pretty safe. In fact whenever someone went in to fight the dragon most high level players cheered them on.
Well more often then not, those players died. When they died, as the article mentions, they lost almost all their gear. Usually keeping their weapon, body armor and leg armor, but dropping their helmet and food. The loot would fall to the ground and sadly the high level players on the outside were unable to open the door and retrieve it (since they completed the quest already and the door was locked for them). So they had to watch the loot despawn.
Enter the vultures. Run into the battle area after someone failed to kill the dragon, dodge the drag itself, and try to scoop up as much loot as you could. I forget if you could use the door to exit or if we teleported out.
Was it the most efficient way to make money? Probably not. Was it fun to run around a dragons lair? Absolutely. Did it suck when you were the one to die and have your loot picked by other vultures? Such was the nature of the game.
In the long run the modern death mechanics are probably better for the game as a whole, but sometimes chaos is just more fun.
I agree with you, it didn’t suck in the slightest, wth? It was one of the most iconic parts of Runescape. It also added a ton of strategy by having to manage risk/reward. Smh…
I have never really cared for the dropping of items on death outside of PvP (or loss of XP as was the case with some games). Makes sense in PvP; doesn’t make a lot of sense in PvE (especially if it’s a PvE only game). It’s not like the NPCs that killed you are gonna take your shit. In PvP, tho, the biggest reason to attack someone else is to take their shit. The mechanic was always just extra, unnecessary punishment outside of PvP on top of having to restart/run all the way back from the nearest spawn point (which could have been hella far back in the day).
