Ahhhh, memories of the "good ole days."
If you've never seen it, check out this oldie-but-goodie classic EQ video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKDkvy9sKuY
In the past, not only did you have to return to your corpse to loot everything - including all worn items (one could tell the "dead toons" because they were back to the "just rezzed" look), you had to locate your corpse in the first place. This was trickier in some zones than others and more difficult for those who had just begun to play EQ and hadn't yet learned the layout of the zones. (No in world maps at the time either.) Greater Faydark was a bit tricky due to it being primarily a forest, plus many a hapless soul accidentally fell off one of the Kelethin platforms to an untimely demise. Thus the very common shout, "Has Anybody Seen My Corpse?"
Necros were able to locate corpses, so they were in demand at the time for this purpose. I tipped many a necro for this service, until I discovered a miracle - Chipped Bone Rods. They had 5 charges (I think) in them and would point the direction of one's own corpse. I began traveling at all times with one or two of these in my bags. At higher levels when the loss of experience really hurt, especially for us soloers
, I also made sure I always had enough plat on me to tip a cleric well for a rez.
My most memorable experience with dying prior to the current system: Not sure what level I was, maybe low 30ish. I was doing a quest, got turned around, found myself in Kael Drakkel, cast invis on myself (my main is a Druid) and tried to find my way out. Of course invis dropped and I was dead in seconds once the giants spied me. I asked for help from my guild but there was no one, at least online at the time, who was high enough level and/or had indifferent or amiable faction with the giants to enter without risking their own death. A few people teamed up, came over, found my corpse, but it was in an area that, iirc, the mobs could see through invis. Not sure how I finally got my corpse back. I'm sure one of the guildies brought it out for me - you could give permission to another to drag your corpse to a safer area for looting. I just remember it took a bunch of people from my guild and an hour or so to recover it. I never went near Kael Drakkel again...
...until a couple weeks ago. Except for that one experience, I'd never seen the zone and it was time for payback!!! *grins*