hat happens when player characters die? They become ghosts! This page explains the death penalty system in World of Warcraft.
Death is the state a character is in when their health reaches zero (or less). When a player dies, they are unable to take further actions until they release their spirit or are resurrected. Dead players leave a corpse at the location where they died. Upon dying, the player is presented with two options: Release Spirit and Recap. The Death Recap Screen provides a short list of the most recent sources of damage, allowing the player to review their cause of death. Repeated deaths within a short time will cause a "resurrection timer" to appear, which temporarily grays out the Release Spirit button (likely to prevent zerging). After 6 minutes the player's spirit will automatically be released.
Unlike other games, in World of Warcraft you lose no items or experience when you die. Instead, all of your equipped items immediately take a 10% durability reduction (this applies only to items equipped when you died, not to items in your inventory). While in spirit form, you can run back to your corpse and rejoin it for no additional penalty by selecting the "Resurrect Now" button when you come within range; you come back to life with half health and half mana. Run speed is increased while you are a spirit and you are able to walk on water.
As a ghost, you have three options:
- You can return to your corpse and recover it. There is no further penalty if you choose this option.
- You can have a fellow player (Paladin, Shaman, Priest, or Warlock) resurrect you, which will bring you back to life next to that player. There are also items in the game that allow players of any class to resurrect you. You will not lose any experience when resurrected by another player, but you will have "resurrection sickness" for a few minutes. Players with resurrection sickness will have a temporary reduction in character attributes. Also, you can be resurrected by other players even after you have released your spirit back to the graveyard.
- You can talk to the spirit healer NPC to immediately resurrect yourself at the spirit healer's location for a debuff. That debuff is called Resurrection Sickness; ideally, you won't have to use a spirit healer too often since you can be resurrected by a Paladin, Shaman, Priest, or Warlock player. It will also usually be easy enough to walk back to your corpse as a ghost. If you do decide to use a spirit healer, you will become very weak and will have to wait for the debuff to end if you are to do some serious killing.
When the player's spirit is released, they will turn into a spirit form (a ghost or, in the case of night elves, a wisp), which spawns at the nearest graveyard. A player in ghost form appears as a blueish-gray, transparent version of their normal model. As a ghost, you will only have 1 point of health. Death will automatically remove all Buffs and Debuffs from the character, except for the "Resurrection Sickness" debuff, which is applied, and certain Flask effects that persist through death.