There are many ways to die in MMORPGs. But bet, each of you has already died on these 10 variants?
In MMORPGs, death is simply part of it. No matter how good you are, at some point every warrior gets caught and after the defeat he sees himself again at the spirit healer, a cemetery, a chapel or some other place of rebirth.
But what happens before that is often the most exciting thing. Because how did you actually die? Despite the diversity of MMORPGs, there are recurring ways to bite the dust.
Of course, not all deaths apply to all MMORPGs, but most of them should at least look familiar.
1. Drowned
Simple and direct. You miscalculated a bit during the quest and dived in a shipwreck for a few seconds too long. Or you just wanted to take the phone call quickly while your character struggled for breath a few centimeters below the water surface.
As it should be, you then just barely reach the water surface. So your own warrior floats lifeless in the sea, a lake or simply a small pond. Not a glorious death – but they rarely are in MMORPGs anyway.
2. Auto-running to death
Long distances are part of everyday life in MMORPGs. Running routes of several minutes, crossing entire areas or even half a continent, are simply a side effect of large, immersive game worlds. But where the first course was still interesting, the second and third is no longer so.
How handy it is that in many games you have an “auto run” function, where our brave warrior will stubbornly run in a straight line until we tell him otherwise. This is good, it allows you to tab out of the game and watch a short video on YouTube. After that there is even time to answer the one impatient friend in the Discord. Oh, and there’s already the next YouTube video.
It comes, as it must. Only after many minutes do you switch back to the game and stare at the screen. The hero has done his job with meticulous perfection, walking to the ends of the earth for you – and beyond. Now his lifeless body lies far, far in the exhaustion zone or some enemy camp.
3. Walked between two enemy groups
Combat is an important part of MMORPGs. But not every fight has to be fought. Many enemies can be avoided easily, as long as you don’t get into the aggro radius of the mobs with your own character, they will leave you alone.
But MMORPG players get greedy. Too greedy. Where you can bypass a group of mobs, you could safely ride past two of them unscathed if you just find the middle ground…
And indeed one finds the golden mean.
However, it is so perfect that you neither avoid one nor the other group, but both get directly involved in a fight. Brought back to the limits of reality quite quickly by this majority, you quickly find your own character dead on the ground.
4. Dying from the boss ability you just scoffed at
It’s a long raid night. Actually, this boss here is not that difficult. But every time somehow the two idiots in the raid manage to die from the same ability. You would only have to dodge a step in time.
You are dissatisfied. And now you’ve also gotten a little louder in the Discord. Surely it can’t be that difficult to avoid this ability. A little less distracted by YouTube, then it will work out.
And then it comes as it must come. On the very next try, you get a little distracted yourself, or you try to use an ability before you dodge after all – and you die.
Awkward silence on Discord. But sometimes that is also very healing.
5. Fell off the elevator…
The worlds of MMORPGs are big. And mostly also in the vertical. So almost every game has elevators that take the hero from one level to the next. Without a break, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, these elevators go up and down, over and over again.
But that involves waiting. And if there’s one thing MMORPG players can’t do, it’s standing still and patiently waiting for the game to do something on its own. So you move back and forth, hop around a bit, use a little jump spell or a sprint ability…
… and you land on the ground, right in front of the elevator. Of course, the best guild on the server is also dropping by at exactly this moment to witness this disgrace live and in color.
6. …and killed by the elevator
In the meantime you have learned. Elevators are death machines and the only way to win against them is to keep as still as possible. Just as you arrive, the elevator goes up. So you stand exactly where the platform will land. You vowed not to move this time, lest you become the server’s taunt again as a pancake on the ground.
The elevator descends again. It will soon rush through your character’s model and you only have to jump once to – mud. The elevator just crushed you and your hero is dead again. Of course, that’s the only elevator in the whole game that can do that.
How you do it, you do it wrong.
7. Just help the friend…
Good friends help each other – also in MMORPGs. If the little level 20 magician needs help with a quest that is too difficult, then the big, wise level 50 priest is happy to come and help.
Of course, you only do that out of pure charity and not because you want to brag about your own character and strength a tiny bit.
Heroically you come running, ask with a beaming smile which evil elite opponent is causing problems and then run to kill him. Just as the first spell is about to fly – boom.
A villain from an enemy player group has emerged from the shadows. At level 70, of course. With three hits, he knocks your character out of his shoes and leaves his level 20 colleague unharmed. You both look at each other a little embarrassed and two minutes later decide to just pretend nothing happened.
8. Disconnect in battle
Most fights in MMORPGs are not particularly difficult, but part of everyday life. Especially when it comes to daily missions that simply have to be beaten up by a few common woodland villains, this rarely causes problems. After all, these enemies have already been taken out by the hundreds, if not thousands. And with the superior equipment, it shouldn’t be a problem at all. Just use Basic Attack once or twice and… well?
Somehow the spell is not executed and the enemy reacts much less to the attack than you are used to. And the next spell doesn’t want either. The eyes widen in panic when one of the most German of all problems strikes again: bad internet and with it a disconnect.
After all, most games seem to be programmed in such a way that you can log back in just as quickly to see the angry mob beating the last percentage point of HP out of the hero.
9. Death in safe territory
MMORPGs are time consuming and sometimes you just need to get away from the PC a bit. You could log out, but then you have to get back on again later and with a bit of bad luck there will be a queue.
So instead you park the character in a safe spot – maybe in a capital city or a small village or high up on a hill where no enemy is around.
10 minutes goes by and you come back to the PC only to stare at the screen completely confused as to why you’re dead again. There is no clue as to what happened and it is a mystery that will never be solved.
10. Died with the chat window open
Do you know that feeling of panic that slowly builds up when the mob happily runs towards your character and smacks him on the nose with growing enthusiasm while your hero just doesn’t fight back? A disconnect is not always to blame – sometimes it is much simpler, namely an open chat window.
The end of the story is that your own warrior has bitten the dust again and the rest of the players in the general channel can now read the message “1122wwwssad22234121122132212312314124132”. But at least that puts a smile on everyone’s lips. Because every MMO veteran knows exactly what just happened.
Do you have any other typical “methods” that are used in MMORPGs?