I love the idea of jacking up the stakes with permadeath. A few years back I watched some YouTube vids by a guy that was playing Far Cry 3 (I think this series). It makes the game so much more interesting/exciting imo. I hadn't heard of 9 Lives but it looks cool. A big danger for games that implement permadeath would be if they become pay to win... studios will need to avoid that.

Ahhhh I have a serious hankering for some fps/mmorpg time now!