How to manage death in MMORPG has always been  one of the most debated topics for players and for designers.

At the beginning in Ultima Online, dying was putting you under the risk of loosing all of your equipment.

Not that equipment in UO was meaning that much at the time, but anyway it was costing some money (or time and patience if you prefer). Small money, but still money.
Recently, the UO Dev Team decided to give more power (and so value) to equipment, and by doing so they decided that adding an insurance system into the game was needed.

In Everquest you seriously want and ever wanted to avoid death, because the experience loss you would get could mean hours of XP farming gone.

Each MMORPG is following it's own philosophy on this,  with EVE Online probably being the most hardcore and World of Warcraft the most carebear friendly.

In this editorial , two writers at MMORPG.com are discussing the topic showing two different approaches.

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