As the age of players is so high (compared with other games), I say that penalty should be high, so people ARE afraid to die. The skills taken is very good idea
nope it's not, imho. As others already said, every permanent loss of of pratice points or skills will be extremely frustrating and it will help nothing. Instead, one the following things will happen:
1. If you are a power-leveller and just do RP sometimes, you will most probably reduce your RP to regain what you have lost. After all, that is what pure powerlevellers do, right?
2. Weak characters will get extremely frustrated because they do not have many skills anyway and they will feel as doing the same thing over and over again (actually, this is what they will be doing). All in all, this would only drive many players away, I would say.
3. Implementing static effects will lead players to be more careful, but is this really what you want? It will make players only fight monsters they really know they can handle (If they know about that at all, and as far as I know, you need a certain amount of int to be able to know that).
This may a bit off-topic, but I really have the feeling that more and more ideas are brought up that demand changes just for the sake of realism. This is still a game, and as every game it should be fun to play it. Additionally, it is *not* a game that should be based on pure realism. If I want like to play such a game, I would choose "Sim City" or something like that. Each and every decision should be made on the basis, that most players have fun playing. Frustrating them without any real cause will only make more players turn away.
And a last remark about the death-penalty: In contrary to what it may look like, I have no problem with the way it is now. I had no problem with it when it really bothered me because my character was weaker. And I would also have no problem with a larger death-realm, maybe one with changing exits or something like that. But every permant removal of skills is (imho) way too much.