The "death penalty" of games: yes, that certainly makes sense. Virtual worlds must punish. Virtual worlds built around the concept of war must punish with death. A few alternatives:
-surrender of land
-occupation
-embargoes
-sanctions
-broken families
-incineration of cities
-torture
-slavery
-inflation
-physical disability
-PTSD
-imprisonment
-exile
-scorched earth
But these are much more messy. Death is easily inflicted and overturned in a virtual world.
Klastrup's "Note on Death and Dying" in WOW calls attention to the construction of mortality and its interface (so to speak) with players. Her most provocative findings/conclusions are: 1) it can teach through incentive; 2) it is an event (she makes this claim indirectly through Van Gennep's idea of a "liminal phase" and her rebuttal of the player who described battleground death as a non-event).
From this I'd like to offer one re-rebuttal and two questions:
Re-rebuttal: Death is an event in WOW but not a death event. I will ignore PVE and PVP and Battlegrounds and get right to the most narrative-worthy material: the Leeroy Jenkins death--dying under the high-stakes conditions of a group run/instance/quest. As Klastrup indicates, this kind of death does not only produce fools. It makes heroes too (although I don't agree that these "valorous" deaths parallel WWI accounts--think of Wilson Owen and trenches, and the comparison falls apart). My point is that this kind of death focuses much more on shifts in social standing than on a bodily event. The group, if wiped, re-spawns and retries. Nothing physical (besides the durability of armor) transforms. Death, on the other hand, is a fleshy event. Without any permanent material rupture, death be not found.
The game should be approached--as should most games--as a combat simulator without killing. "Permadeath" should not describe "death." "Death" should. What happens in WOW is more along the lines of involuntary teleportation--a non-non-death
Question 1): Does this really matter?
Question 2): If it (death or the non-non-death) is a powerful incentive to learn, should we bring it into the classroom?