Originally posted by zxzc77:

Dropping your items on death actually wasn't a very common mechanic until around the time Minecraft came out.

Not sure what games you played, but Any RPG I ever played dropped items or left a corpse.

Everquest, Dungeon Siege, WoW, and many other RPGs were this way, all around year 2000

Most RPGs from before that time were just permadeath and you restart the game when you died.