World of Warcraft Beta Review

The guys at XPD8 have posted an overly positive review of the World of Warcraft beta. Here’s a bit about death penalties:

Death penalties are present in game, and have gone through some changes as the testing has progressed. Currently when you die, you are resurrected at the nearest binding stone (found in many towns and cities) as a ghost. You must then make a (corpse run) to the location where you died and where your body waits for you (a pointer to your corpse is placed on your compass). Once there, you will have the option to resurrect within a certain range of your body, allowing you to avoid resurrecting right next to an enemy. As a ghost you are invisible to others (including creatures) and you move faster, but you are in a state where you can perform only limited functions (since you’re dead, as it were). There is also the option of using the Spirit Healer at the bind stone to resurrect immediately, but this option will cost you XP, a pricey deal for sure. This setup is a nice compromise of penalty for dying (so as to make one avoid it) without penalizing too harshly (the anguish of losing high quality items is not present) while still providing an option for immediate resurrection. But this quick fix is expensive enough to dissuade players from simply getting killed just to get back to a town quickly (using death as a cheap portal). Some classes will also have the ability to resurrect players, so you may not have to worry about corpse runs or paying XP costs for instant resurrection. Of course, player resurrections come with (rez sickness) where your attributes, such as strength and spirit, are dropped by several points for a few minutes.