RoleCraft: Who Wants To Live Forever?

Jim Moreno's bi-weekly role-playing column "RoleCraft" gets going again today on a new day. Every other Monday, Moreno brings you his thoughts on role-playing and MMORPGs. This week, he looks at permanent death - specifically among NPCs - and how it is explained away by role-players in MMOGs like World of Warcraft.

How many times has Onyxia been slain? Has anyone seen and/or heard of any major Alliance or Horde leader being killed? And what do you know, a few minutes later, they return! Perhaps what our characters see of them is merely their avatar, and that their true selves in fact exist on another plane? Heck, stranger things have happened in WoW, right? Didn't we just have a spaceship crash not too long ago? With that, I reserve the right to RP any wild & crazy idea that my rampant imagination can create!

Read more after the leap.

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See, I have a similar problem but from the opposite end. Considering heroes, mobs, etc. can come back (thanks to either magic or the Spirit Healer, if only used as a game device), what happens to those characters who die and -dont- come back? Did they simply choose not to return back with the Spirit Healer? Did they even have a choice?

And what determines being allowed to be ressed and what isn't allowed?

Well if you need to know how evil monsters like Onyxia comes back to life i have one word.

the Nightmare.
(the old gods)

And some of them dont come bcak to life because theyve already done the task given to them so they arent needed in the world anymore.

Well, this is one of the irritating things about WoW to me. There just aren't enough consequences to death in the game. Hehe. I miss looting!