You know I keep hearing from people that they don't like the xp debt system. People talk about how badly it sucks when some moron dies on the way to your party, and that you take a hit for it. I can understand that part.
What I don't understand is people saying that the original Everquest had a better system for death. Not only did you lose more xp and could delevel, but all of your gear was on your body. If you died where you were the first time with all your gear, many times you just were not strong enough to get that body back.
People counter by saying that with clerics rez you only lost 2% xp. I have to ask those people, did you play at release? There were no 50th level clerics. And the first rez spell was 44th level (ok might have been 49th, its been a while). So for the entire time we were leveling our characters we didn't even have the rez that gave no xp, we had to hoof it back.
I remember many friends quitting in the first few months because the death penalties were so harsh. Sure, once people had cleric mules to log in just for rezzing, and those clerics had their epics death wasn't so bad. But at level 24 dying in the house in unrest was way worse than anything I have seen in EQ2.
I like the xp debt system. I like that everyone becomes responsible for the whole party. I like that the debt is small, and can be worked off quickly. Even better I like that if you wipe you can log off for a few days, and come back with all debt gone.
And for all we know there may be higher level cleric spells that reduce debt. But even if there aren't the penalties are still minor.