[Tyhm]

I'd love to vote for permadeath, but in good conscience I can't. There will always be too many ways to die. There will always be some jerk willing to restart just to put a knife between your ribs. There will always be some bug by which you die every time you revive - even if just for a day, even if just for a minute, that'll permanently screw over people who've been playing for a long time, people who don't want to give up everything they've worked for, all their amassed wealth. I agree it'd be awesome in theory, but in practice I KNOW it's a bad idea. Case in point, Kingdoms. Classic even. You can go on and have your experiment if you want, but people WILL be stupid, people WILL ruin the game for each other. I hope, and believe, a compromise can be found - if you remember early G2K2, it was almost impossible to die. If it's that hard to get yourself killed, then hell yeah the penalty should be steep! Possibly even permanent!

In my D&D groups, the rule is simple: You only die if you do something stupid, and you pretty much never get your character back. If you can guarantee nobody ever dies by doing something other than a clearly suicidal act - you can't die on a quest, only get set back, you can't get killed by anyone at any level unless you're attacking too instead of running away - then yeah, go for permadeath. But it should be the LAST thing you add, not the first.