>but I'll be damned
>if I'm gonna invest gobs of time into creating a backstory and
>a face for a character just to watch them get perpetually
>slaughtered in pvp because I took on a mob bigger than my gear
>and then I have to try to face down someone 4 levels above me
>who's geared like a hero.

So you can't RP unless you're a PvP bad ass? Uh, okay. How about a role that doesn't involve you being a certified ass kicker?

>Can I
>get into RP'ing a character who's thousands of XP behind the
>curve and I know is gonna get pummeled by every rager or
>imperial? No. Delete... delete.

I'm finding it really difficult to understand why being in an XP hole makes it hard for you to role-play a character. Like, it doesn't even compute. Why would that matter?

Mob dying when you're near hero costs you 1/3 CON and, say, 45 extra minutes of ranking. Meh. If I've invested time and effort in a character then that's nothing to me. By that I mean stuff like: got into a cabal, spammed up some skills, took the time to write a description and role, maybe made some progress in a religion, and made some IC allies and enemies. And I'm going to throw all that away because of a silly mob death? No way.

>No. I'd rather delete than suffer the utter embarrassment...
>again... of being everyone's favorite punching bag and having
>my aldervari gear sacced before I can get back to my corpse
>because hours before I died trying to get charred bracers.

People sac your Aldevari stuff? That's lame. And, I hope, not the norm when most newbies die.

I find that many players, certainly including myself, go through certain "phases" with respect to PvP. Roughly, they are:

Level 0: You die all the time and aren't even sure why. Your gear is always sub-standard because you don't know where to get anything. You're frequently "lost" after teleporting. You can't afford to keep return/teleport potions on hand, or detect invis. When in PK you often panic and spam commands.

Level 1: You know where some gear is and you know most "common" areas. You know how to earn gold quickly enough to keep returns/teleports on hand. You've learned how to avoid people that are likely to kick your ass, but that is still pretty much everyone. When you do get into a fight, you're pretty good at running/quaffing away and not dying. You still don't initiate fights.

Level 2: You know what most common gear does and where to find it. You know most common areas very well, and a few less common areas. Your understanding of mechanics is better and you're mostly correct in evaluating which match-ups favor you and which don't. You're still wrong sometimes. You've started initiating fights against enemies you perceive yourself to match up well against.

Level 3: You know almost all the gear in the game and all the areas, both common and non. You understand match-ups as well as anyone and have a deep knowledge of how every class's skills work. You're good enough to initiate fights with people you don't match up well against and still win.

I consider myself to be around a "2.5" in the above scale. And that's after playing for 15+ years. A realistic goal is to reach Level One as quickly as possible. The game is considerably less frustrating when you're not a ghost half the time. At that point, if you're interested, you can start trying to actually kill other people.

Deleting the first time you mob-die, especially when that happens prior to level 11, is not conducive to you learning anything and/or improving at the game.

>And you hit on another one that I'll touch on. Mobs who kick
>the utter #### (maul or worse) out of noobs is exactly why I
>will not play a Gnome or Svirf any more.

Honestly, I don't blame you. I won't play gnomes either. Svirfs at least get inherent stone skin.

Solution to mob deaths: don't fight any mob that considers at "few lucky blows" or higher. If you stick to "perfect match" and below, it's almost always possible to flee without dying, even if you can't kill the mob in a single pass.