The thought certainly crossed my mind, too, but I read a few things in the developer journals that make me believe this is being addressed in the core game play design.
The key concepts are Souls, Reincarnation, and a very interesting design element called the Offline Player Character (OPC)--a hybrid character type that is part NPC and part Player Character.
It’s believed that when someone dies their soul returns to a great library called the Akashic Records. The library is filled with books and scrolls containing all of the deeds of every life a soul has lived. It’s in these chambers that a soul can read over their past lives and learn from their mistakes in preparation for their next life.
It’s also said that every soul is born with a purpose. That they choose the precise time and place in which to be born so they can learn the lessons needed to attain enlightenment.
Anara Starsong – Keeper of Chronicles
Your character maintains their place in the world even when you sign off, and aging happens whether you’re online or not. But this creates another problem. In a game where your character ages and dies, you want to get as much life out of them as you can.
The really high level summary:
- Your character can die of old age
- Your character possesses a soul, and skills/talents are attached to the soul (makes me think of Rift class customization taken to another level)
- When your character dies and you "insert a quarter" to continue playing as a new character, the soul(s) of your ancestor(s) (or ancestral traits if you will) can be passed down to (or reincarnated within) the new character
- OPCs allow your character to persist in the game world as a hybrid NPC even when you are signed off
- OPC AI will allow you to create scripted behaviors, which will permit your character to continue performing various and sundry tasks such as training skills or acting as guards
I also like the business model from the standpoint that it could encourage a Firiona Vie -like experience, but it may make alt-a-holics cranky. Many players may choose to pay the "annual subscription fee" only once (per year)--focusing on only one character--unless you were one of the FV enthusiasts who paid for multiple accounts in order to play alts on the server, which was the only way you could do so originally due to the one character per account rule for that server.
The annual cost of a "Spark of Life" to create a new character after one dies is proposed to be 30-40 USD--about the cost of an expansion pack--roughly translating to $3/month when compared to a monthly subscription model. It's not prohibitive of alt-o-holicism, but may be enough to throttle a rampant spread.
I read a post on the forums that mentions a YouTube Q&A from January that talks about how hardcore gamers would have no distinct advantage over casual gamers because this game is not being designed for a grind but rather for having a social experience. I haven't located the specific Q&A video, but transcripts and links to the videos are below (each video seems to run just over an hour).
I haven't even finished reading these few links from the Q&A and Dev Journals. There's tons of exciting information in there, and there's still 15 more journal posts to look at, too.
There's game video footage posted at the link Lyrima provided, and the world is looking pretty amazing in its pre-Alpha stage.
This is giving me a bit of a spark of life out on the long term gaming horizon.
Q&A Transcripts / Links to YouTube Videoshttps://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/General-Discussion/900-QA-TranscriptsDesign Journal #1 – Introduction to Soulshttps://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/323-Design-Journal-1--Introduction-to-SoulsDesign Journal #2 – Soul Selection, Destiny, Achievements and Soul Mateshttps://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/346-Design-Journal-2--Soul-Selection-Destiny-Achievements-and-Soul-MatesDesign Journal #3 – Time, Aging, and Offline Player Charactershttps://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/347-Design-Journal-3--Time-Aging-and-Offline-Player-Characters