Do MMORPGS feel too safe and comfortable?

I played Everquest back in the 'old school' days. That time was defined by danger. Everquest players back in the day would sweat, scream and be turned into shivering wrecks. All due to the result of being able to lose items upon death. All was happy if you could run to your corpse and recover. No problem, goods intact. Things took a dark turn if your avatar happened to buy the farm at the bottom of some hardcore underground labyrinth that was impossible to solo. The result being, your hard-earned loot was locked on that corpse. No magical reset key to save the day. Cruel you might say? Difficult you might say? Terror-inducing you would be correct.

A whole scene emerged of players hiring (or begging) other players to host rescue missions to recover loot. Friends were made, and loot was recovered. But not always. To this day, those Blackburrow Gnolls permanently hold some hard-earned loot of mine, I'm sure of it.

Now this scenerio would be completely foreign to the now-a-days MMO players. Death means a short run and a trivial penalty. Death has become the slightest of irritations. I've partied with players in World of Warcraft that will even use death as a quick teleport method of travel.

There's something not right with all of this. Death in gaming has a tradition of being something to avoid. We've spent money in arcades playing against it. There are high-score leaderboards on XboxLive to demonstrate victories over it. And now we have MMO's treating it as 'meh'.

Everquest was harsh, granted. I'm sure as World of Warcraft players, having our epic items corpse locked at the bottom of Naxx would induce some sort of temporary psychosis. That said, Everquest was fun. There was no plodding through dungeons, with one eye on the screen and the other watching TV. As a player, you were focused and nervous. Excited at the challenge of playing with skill so you didn't have the embarrassment of running around naked asking for help in getting your stuff back. It was a fantasy world with risk and danger. Modern MMOs feel too safe and cosy in comparison.

There's no going back to the hardcore days at this point. Corpse locking items would be seen as madness by a player-base cultured towards more methodical gameplay. But is it too much to ask for some sort of increased ambiance of danger in MMOs? Dungeons should feel a touch nerve-warcking surely? A group should have to run away from a dragon sometimes. These are classic fantasy conventions that are being lost in the treadmill of leveling that has taken over game design.

Lets feel scared again shall we?