What happens when I die?
When you die you get disabled and put in a recovery state for a certain amount of time before you can re-join the combat. Dying as a matter of fact is very different in this game than any other. You can actually play a mini game of death when you die. You get to pick a fate of your death, which allows you to choose from about a thousand ways to die. Your recovery time depends on your fate. You may even get instant recovery if you are lucky or get unlucky and get a 5 minute recovery time.

Either way there is no major penalty for death, except if you get killed while trying to conquer a land you will have to start the claiming process all over again.

There is no other death penalty so if you just want to play for fun and duel your friends, you can.