Since when did they add back near death trauma. I thought the whole purpose of adding in the xp loss when you died was cause they were removing near death trauma and now we have both? That's seriously lame...
Maybe you were still in beginner protection. It is active up to level 5.
After that you have a death penalty which is shown as a red XP bar at the bottom. When you have reached the necessary XP it disappears and you have the normal XP bar again.