lowsider

I think we're going about this all wrong. Just to re-state the problem: Player gear is higher valued than the player's life. Leveling up is a good mechanism to give a character more value to the user. (That's the carrot.) Here's the stick: The user only gets 1 life per day. If you die today, you don't get to play again till tomorrow. That's a little extreme, but I think it makes the point. If death came with a greater penalty, you would fear it more than losing your loot, and thus value life more. Obviously 1 life per day would cause people to quit .. but i bet there's a balance you could strike with that. Even if it was nothing more than the user having to wait in timeout for 20 minutes before being allowed to play again.