>It isn't an explore area thing. Those sorts of checks were
>placed at a number of areas in order to keep people from
>abusing ghost status to gather equipment, explore, etc.

Having them lose protective status in the explore area would still prevent this.

>So it isn't trivial to keep track of:
> This effect could either disappear when the ghost leaves
>the explore area

Well, okay, maybe not completely trivial. But it doesn't seem supremely difficult either. Obviously without having seen the code it's hard to judge something like that.

>and this could be abused:
>or it could be permanent, i.e. entering an explore area as
>a ghost instantly rematerializes you.

Okay, good point. Scratch that idea. One could abuse protection-removal-in-explore-areas to repeatedly attack foes inside explore areas, so it might be necessary to only remove mob protection and leave PK protection. Not to protect the ghost, per se, but to keep him from attacking other PKs who happen to be inside explore areas.