What is the best in-game explanation for a common unrealistic video game mechanic?
MMOs have the problem where every single player character has the privileges of a main character in a regular video game. Notably, everybody in an MMO gets to respawn after they die. And time doesn’t rewind to your last checkpoint, either. Your character just falls over, and after a loading screen, you’re back in your hub town or whatever. Many games handwave this, giving some crappy explanation for why thousands of people have the ability to cheat death. Some don’t even bother giving an explanation at all, you just get a ‘game over’ and load at a safe point. EVE Online, the spaceship themed MMO that I write about every now and then here on Quora, has an interesting in-universe explanation for how this works. Player characters are called ‘capsuleers’, called this because they pilot advanced capsule-shaped spacecraft, from which they can control and pilot even larger ships all by themselves. So what happens when a capsule is destroyed? A capsuleer is a masterwork of cyberne...
