Wizardry Online: Prepare to Die, Permanently

Wizardry online during my time playing it is worth the coining off dark souls in the title. It is a rather well made mmo based off the wizardry series. Before you confused this game with Wizards 101 it is not that cartoony magic pew pew mmo. This is a hack and slash mmo that has a rather well built combat system with dodging, blocking, abilities and etc that are not based on percentages.

The Death system in this game is another unique feature. As you progress through the game your chance to revive once you die is decreased everytime you level up your soul level. You can up your revive percentage by sacrificing items to the Scales. So this means that if you wanna get a perfect chance to revive you are going to have to give up all that Phat loot you collect before you went silly and died.

The class and race system doesnt really have all that much innovation.

The PvP and player interactions though....
Thieves can actually thief! You can steal from fellow players when you are in town or in a dungeon, but beware with every crime against players you commit the more you will be hated by guards and attacked on site. Players who commit crimes glow red to show their evil.

Also the game is free

Tl;Dr
Free Dungeon crawling mmo with perma death. PLAY

Ive played this game before and I have to say that its the best free game Ive ever seen in my whole life ! no joke ! Its really awesome  The combat system is good and Im really lucky non of my character died (for now) XD

knowing me I'd die half an hour and give it up

Kinda off topic, but I remember hearing about this series when Dir en grey (a band I listen to) remade their old song as theme song for the game:

I remember wanting to try it a while back,  but I never got around to it. It looked great, and after I heard some of the things you mentioned it sounds even better. I just don't think an MMO can possibly pull me away from my current Dark Souls kick (and good luck trying to pry me from Dark Souls 2).