Risk in mmorpgs

There's a good article about risk in mmorpgs on mmocrunch at the moment.

However, while it lays into the often zero risk nature of mmorpgs, they felt EVE made sense. Here's what I had to say:

As far as I'm aware, in terms of risk Eve suffers or fails in that in more dangerous space you have no idea of the risk (you have some idea in poker, for example) since people who will kill you aren't regulated in any way. Is it thrilling when there was a zero change of being ganked, cause all the local gankers were on bio break?

Well I guess that raises the question that if you don't know you couldn't die, but you felt as if you could and that was exciting, whether it the truth of the situation or the feeling of the situation that matters. Personally I'd go with the truth.

Second is that as far as I understand it, it's risking $100 to gain $1. For example, in more dangerous space, will one instance of mining pay twice the value of your ship and it's mods/your guys mods? I'm thinking no, it'll only pay a fraction.

In poker you don't risk $100 to gain $1. You usually risk a certain amount to win multiple times that amount.

I think even if you like risking $100 to gain $1, it'll make you risk adverse and when you do lose, it'll really, really suck. Atleast in poker you can say "Well, I lost $10 but I could have won $100!" while here it's "Well, I lost $100 but I could have won $1...AH CRAP!"