Cap'n John has an interesting post up on improving WoW. He has two ideas: One is more RvR style of PvP outside of battlegrounds, and the other is permadeath. I can see how the former could work, but I'm afraid the latter is out of the question.
If you ever played on both a "normal" and a "PvP" server, you notice that there is actually not very much of a difference between them. The more important part of PvP takes place in the arena or on battlegrounds, because that is where the PvP rewards are. And arena and battlegrounds are as available on a normal server as they are on a PvP server. Basically a PvP server only adds ganking. Somebody who signed up for a PvP server because he likes PvP can't be very satisfied with that, because there aren't any additional PvP objectives on a PvP server, unless you like to grief people. So the idea of turning more places into Halaa-like contested towns on PvP servers would be interesting.
Permadeath on the other hand isn't viable in a game like World of Warcraft. The game is designed for you to die often. If you enter a heroic instance or raid dungeon for the first time, you are near certain to wipe a couple of times before learning how to overcome a new boss mob. I've played Everquest, which while not having permadeath had a much harsher death penalty, and even that lead to boring gameplay. If death is painful, people play it safe. Which means that dungeons are void of people of the level range they were designed for, and the Deadmines would only be visited by groups with a level 70 player helping guild mates to get equipped. People invest far too much time into a single character to accept the possibility of losing him permanently.
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