Disclaimer: First, I hope I do not come off as overly critical of this, as this IS still the best bloody server in the entire history of NWN, and its team obviously one of the most skilled, talented and created on earth. I do however have very strong opinions on *this* one issue.
On whether players prefer this system, I believe that if a majority of players truly supported permadeath as being what was best for them, many MMORPGs currently raking in the big bucks would have added such systems to their own servers. However, considering that they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to market analysts and playtesters, the very fact they haven't adopted permadeath proves that it is not profitable or enjoyable to most and does not lead to longterm retention of the majority of players.
I also believe that should there be permadeath in the pay-to-play version, it will quickly be rescinded due to the sheer number of cancelled subscriptions and ANGRY ranting posts demanding reimbursement. Just look at the WoW forum posts of all those bitter little people who never even had a character perm. At the most there should be a "Time-Out" system or XP loss for death, people can handle that when they invest 15 bucks a month. But if there is permanant loss of characters in the next system due to crashes, bugs, lagspikes and the like, not many subscriptions will be retained for long.
Now it has been repeatedly stated that the disputes forum has almost been shut down repeatedly over the amount of Soul Strand reimbursment requests, which I flat out reject. That's like saying "too many people complained about kids skateboarding in their driveway this month, thats it... No more Police Department! Let the looters run wild, you brought this on yourselves." We could just as easily just state in a sticky "no more soul strand reimbursements, from now on use this board for what it was intended for".
Furthermore, I think that every single one of those reimbursement requests are to be counted in this debate, each and every single one of them in known Layo history was the sworn testimony of at least one player in this world that the system in place was faulty *at least in this instance* and that they were unjustly penalized by it. Silencing those voices wont make the resentment go away, it would just build. Don't look at them as requests for reimbursement, but as bug reports on the permadeath system. I think you will find that if you counted up each and every reimbursement report in known history and compared them to the bug reports relating to any other topic, the prior would dwarf the latter.
Now on the other hand, I understand the desire to have it in place, since the RP side of things, people SHOULD die for good. We are all not raging revenants respawning in some Quake Tournament. In my experience however, Bjornigar has 3 death tokens and only one of those was rightfully earned. The other two were due to crashes, bugs, lag spikes, etc. So no matter what is said in favor of the RP factors of permadeath, I the player and Bjornigar the character have been penalized IC for OOC factors 2/3 of the time. No matter how well you plan, how good the party is or how much you've trained and scouted, some mage is still going to cast 20 magic missiles while you're immobilized by a lag spike. You didn't die because the mage was better or smarter, you died because a router in a different dimension had a hiccup. *points above* Wren Thendor should have 6 more tokens left, whether he made the reports or not. In Game, In Character, Wren Thendor is still alive.
Honestly, I shouldn't really care about this whole issue on a personal level because I am so meticulous it would be very very difficult for me to perm. But seeing that the system in place thus far has been inaccurate 2/3 of the time for myself, I wonder if the same ratio so exists with people with 9 death tokens. Computers crash, programs bug, graphic textures corrupt and bad things happen at random. But for somebody to crash into permadeath is about the same RP equivalent of if they were playing PnP, somebody accidentally spilled soda on their character sheet, and then the DM at the table said "roll up a new character, he's dead. Weasels ate him in game while he stood there motionless with 309 hp for 5 minutes and let them nibble him to death". If that happened after 2 years of investment in a PnP campaign, would you return to the same table again? Personally, I would rather perm on a quest, monitored by a GM where my deeds where known, and not to a Microsoft spyware bug or flood of Mountain Dew.
Now as for reports of people abusing the bindstones as a teleportation system, deal with such issues on a case-by-case basis. I have seen no public reprimands or reports naming names, so collective punishment seems a bit harsh as a FIRST resort. If I have a few bad eggs, do I kick the chicken? Or do I just throw out the bad and keep the fresh? I've never been a big fan of collective punishment, as it's like using a bazooka as a flyswatter.
Again, I personally have never even come close to perming so I shouldn't be so opinionated about this. However, I HAVE seen a revolving door of good friends come and go because they lost hope at 9 or 14 DTs or got fed up with seeing some reibursed and others not, so in terms of the people I love vanishing from the server and being another one of the 7500+ forum members out of the 30-50 currently active players, it has affected me. I see project team members and coders sitting there having to meticulously go through all these reports and muttering "I should be doing something more important, this is a waste of my time, etc" and getting demoralized by the sheer anxiety that it causes. I agree, you could be spending your time better. All it would take would be just simply denying ALL strand reimbursements. One little forum sticky, vs a delgue of omnipresent requests. The moderators could deal with REAL issues, and the players could just accept "no" for an answer.
If the only reimbursement requests approved should be done so with a GM witness to vouch for it, then why not take it one step further? Have it so only GMs can request reimbursement for the players. Everything else, lag, crashes, angry girlfriends turning off the machine should be at your own risk.
As it is now, the Disputes Board is so clustered with SS requests, either the permadeath system is more unstable than what it's worth, or the player populace clearly doesnt want it in place. With all the threats to shut down ALL disputes over the volume of one single type of dispute, then perhaps its finally time we admit that the permadeath system has caused more strife than its worth in benefitting RP and gameplay.
So I offer two simple and easy solutions, change permadeath as it is now to something more reliable, or just quit accepting requests for reimbursement of strands at all to begin with. If you need a GM witness to have it approved, then the players should contact that GM directly and it should be up to him/her to make the request.
As far as what my preference is, I would rather see time out than permadeath. But if we keep the system as it is, I would like to point out that not once have I clustered the disputes forum whining over my crashes. I simply clog your heads with endless debate on various other forums to address the primary issue instead.
So I totally understand the reasons for wanting it in place, and the ones to scrap it. It's a double-bladed sword. On the one hand we want more realism in death, on the other, we want more enjoyment of the game based on fantasy. As in most debates, it is unlikely that any single solution or side will please all of the people all of the time. Never truly a win/win situation, so I suggest a compromise.