to create a sense of nervousness..

[Wolfie]

i have to disagree. a severe death penalty promotes cautious and less exciting play. a penalty too strict leads to people fighting mobs that have no chance of beating them so that they don't have a chance to die. i prefer to fight tougher mobs knowing that it will take everything going well to win.

Yes, thank you. For most of my time in FFXI, nobody wanted to do some of the more obscure NMs (like Vuloptuous Vivian) and people stuck to leveling on crabs and tame, boring mobs through most levels. It wasn't fun at all, because more than half of the game world went unused and unexplored. The risk was too big for rewards that were too small.