Great points.... I had not considered the finite xp issue with a mostly quest based progression system. Obviously the penalty system has to meet the design of the game.

After listening to the podcast I have some honest questions for you guys:

Why does an MMORPG need a "Death Penalty"?

Would you want death penalties in Single-Player games? Would a death penalty have made the original KOTOR a better game?

Here's the problem I have with Death Penalties: If not done correctly it can cause a spiraling decline in the gaming experience. If you die, you've already lose whatever consumables you've lost in the encounter that lead to the character's death. To add a penalty on top of that doesn't improve your chances at completing the task.

Then there's the issue of PVP, where the more successful PVP titles generally are FPSs like TF2 who generally don't bother with death penalties. For the average PVE-player PVP can be an aggravating waste of time.

Then there's also the issue of TOR replacing KoTOR as a single-player game and using the MMO platform as a Co-Op/updatable enviroment.

I'm also not a fan of armor/weapon/equipment decay so much as "obsolesence". Unless you're at the endgame, ideally you should be constantly upgrading and recycling your equipment. Having to continually worry about your equipement breaking down on top of whatever penalties you incur if you lose isn't my idea of fun, unless a system is in place to repair the equipment instead of continually replacing it.

It will be interesting to see what Bioware comes up with, but I don't really buy into the notion that you have to be like UO/EQ/EVE/WOW to have a sucessful game.

Great pod cast as always. I really Like corpse runs more then xp lose or ending up in hospitals . I liked how WoW did death ,but I'm always looking for TOR to put it's own little twist on rezing.

I careless about computer spec requirements. I just want the dam game to be out for testing so that I fix the bugs and worry less about buying a new computer, in which I will buy one in 300+ days from now. :D

I have to completely disagree with the notion that buying DX 11 cards is a waste. You guys keep mentioning $400 price tags on cards when that's for the hd 5870. That's one of there top of the line. You have the HD 5850 at $300 which is actually better than the combo card mentioned on this podcast purchased for $350.

No offense to which ever one of you that purchased it, but you mentioned DX11 not being mainstream yet. There's about 4 games out that use it and that's already a much faster start than DX10. Also that combo card has a gtx250 built in for dedicated physx. If anything physx, for all the time its been out is not mainstream and a complete waste.
If you're really that much of an nvidia fan you would be better off just getting yourself a regular GTX 275 or the one with double the ram.

Aslo the HD 5770 is the best price/performance card on the Market. It has the same performance of the 4870 stock with massive overclocking headroom which gives you 80 - 90% of the performance of a gtx 275 depending how well your card overclocks. I'm not an Ati fan boy by any means, and have only owned 1 ATI card in my life time, but I have to reinforce the point that buying any current nvidia card other than the really low end models is a complete waste of money.

Also you guys would do well to check around the internet for some leaked info on the new Nvidia line. Seems they have fallen flat on their face. While this is speculation, there seems to be many sources claiming that there will be even worse availability than there is for the HD 5970. These cards seem to have worse temps than the GTX 285's, and are even bigger than the HD 5870 which is already absurdly large. I think people are going to be in for a disappointment if they think the new Nvidia cards are going to start some price wars.

Again I really hope I'm wrong and this leaked info is nvidia feeding misinformation to the gamer community. But if even half the stuff I heard is true, gamers are going to suffer from overpriced Gpu's for a while longer.

OOPS! Almost forgot.
Great podcast as usual fellas. Keep up the good work!

I am more in favor of Armor degradation + Runback system. If you can influx player economics AND provide a reasonable handicap system for death without gimping the toon and forcing him to stand around the AH for 10 minutes, that would be awesome.

Glad you got the ram issue figured out. Thought it might be a bad ram stick.