Extreme Death Penalties don't make people learn to play, it just makes them do things so carefully that it becomes boring as hell. When I played EQ the entire leveling process was getting a group, standing in a spot for a spawn, killing the spawn, then repeating. Why? No risk, because people didn't actually want risks.
Most people don't play games for risk, they just want something they can log on and waste some enjoyable time. Those that do want risk are a minority and have other places they can go for that junk.