Because then, if you keep up heightened awareness and detect hidden, you will have only a handful of players who can sneak up on you.

So if you use "where" a lot, no one will.

You also have the ability to hide from almost everyone. Only thieves, other assassins, duergar and on-duty tribunals (and some shifters) can see you in civilised terrain, and only rangers and other assassins can see you in the wilds (wood-elves are an exception but even they have limited vision).

This means that if you are an assassin, YOU pick when you fight. So you shouldn't be getting wiped repeatedly.

Ranger is a similar thing, only you are more confined to the wilds.

There are also certain things to avoid if there are lots of enemies on and you don't want to fight. If you die, ranking, continuing to rank where the corpse is will allow anyone who can locate object to pinpoint you, whereupon they may well come after you.

Also, as Quixotic said, where you fight matters. You fight on eastern road? Then be aware there's a HIGH chance of someone else interfering in the fight, and if you die, lowbies are almost certainly going to loot you heavily.

But I don't want to play an assassin, I hear. Well, you don't have to play them forever. Just hero one and play for a decent length of time, and you should find that you aren't dying so much. Talk to other assassins IC about different techniques and you'll then find out stuff like a crunching kotegaeshi means the victim loses whatever they were holding in their off hand (meaning, for example, that a sword spec loses flourintine so has worse parrying, therefore fewer ripostes, and also will only do flurries with up to four hits).

Classes like this should give you a better idea of how pk works, because you'll learn about what makes things harder and easier to sneak up on an enemy, you'll learn terrain better because you aren't always being chased, you'll win some pk's because you'll have the element of surprise, and you won't be multi-killed unless you expose yourself through your own laziness.

Remember, you can phrase things ic to find things out. e.g. Can a fox see me when I'm hiding? will almost certainly get you a "yes" reply.

Also, is it the same people killing you, or not? Because I don't tend to kill someone I know is a newb more than once. However, doesn't mean I won't be the first "bully" on the list that kills you.

cf learning tends to go like this:
Learn to survive:
- always flee a fight you didn't start until you are experienced
- learn the terrain, because if you can move around fast, people will really struggle to kill you
- learn what enemies are able to do. i.e. that fire ap can't see you when you hide, but he could fireball you out, so be ready to run if he does, or hide next to strong mobs etc.
- learn when to run (being in a group doesn't always make you safer
- learn when not to lag (some opponents will kill you if you try to lag them out, so you need to maladict them first if that will help)
- plan with your group. If you are attacked, you don't want to try to fight if the rest of your group is trying to run, and vice versa.