World of Warcraft hardcore is a breath of fresh air for one of the oldest games some of us still play frequently. And with its release in November 2004, there is lots of content for newer players to explore. Playing WoW as your main game however, can get quite boring or frustrating from time to time, and it seems like most players are ready for a new challenge!
Although World of Warcraft does provide a lot of endgame content, it is not always appealing to carelessly grind through raids, complete quests and fight a bunch of enemies all the time.
A lot of players have gotten lazy and don't care about dying anymore, since you just can respawn at the nearest graveyard anyway. In the worst case you may have to repair your items now and then, but there is no other real punishment when dying in the game.
WoW: Hardcore Servers Are On The Way
Several years have passed, and the wow community is still begging for hardcore servers in their favorite game. Many tried to bring themselves closer to said experience by creating challenges like the “Iron-Man-Challenge” or just stopped playing a certain character after they died for the first time. But to be honest, that's just not the real deal.
Another attempt at recreating the HC feeling is the "Classic Hardcore" Add-on. Many players have used it as an alternative for quite some time now. It includes many features that we know from the Diablo HC servers already. You will get notifications when a guild member died and or performs any violations against the rules.
- Are you a clumsy gamer like me? Maybe you should get this World of Warcraft Map to track where all your dead HC WoW characters' graves are!
But finally, Blizzard seemed to listen to their community, since it should be in their best interest to include a pretty popular game mode anyway. After playing the upcoming 10.1 patch on the WoW PTR server, some nosy players stumbled across a specific line of code, which indicates that there is a warning pop-up when creating a character on a hardcore server.
Motivated by the little piece of information that came to light, some data miners from WoWHead looked into it even more and found the same pop-up interface codes in patch 3.4.2 for WoW Classic.
Thereupon the content creator MrGMTY posts the news on Twitter. One of World of Warcraft Classics' former game leads Brian Birmingham, commented with some pretty interesting few words:
I'm a little bit biased, but I think you'll like it. Incredible team working on that.
— Brian Birmingham (@BrianBirming) April 22, 2023
After getting asked if that is a hint for Classic+ he just answered: “I can neither confirm or deny, of course, but I can say that I always loved that idea”
It seems like we have pretty good chances at getting hardcore servers for WoW pretty soon, which is so exciting and opens up the game to a completely new audience. The pure “leveling a new character” experience is going to be way different and rather than just speed running it as fast as possible, you will have an actual adventure ahead of you!
How Hardcore Servers Work In Diablo
Another of Blizzard's flagship games, Diablo 3, clearly as an advantage here. In Diablo, it is very common to create hardcore (HC) characters for some extra excitement.
- Are you getting sick of boring notebooks? Maybe show off your love for the Horde with this sick looking For The Horde Journal Notebook. (And where is my Alliance book?…)
Why are they so hardcore you may ask?
Well, just imagine you are grinding for hours on end with your favorite character just to get clapped by a random enemy appearing on your screen while you were taking a sip of water. The realization kicks in after seeing the “You Have Died” screen, without the little respawn button that should be right next to it. Your gear, your items, your potions, your will to live, it is all gone for good.
Even if that may sound like an experience that would keep most players from starting a HC character, it actually adds a lot of excitement and fun. It definitely requires players to be more conscious of their actions in game. In Diablo 4, even a death in PvP will have serious consequences:
Blizzard described the HC in Diablo as follows:
"The important difference in a Hardcore character is that he or she has but a single life. Should your Hardcore character be slain, it is permanently erased from the game. Hardcore characters can only join games with other Hardcore characters. Hardcore characters are designed for game players who live to ride on the edge of danger."
Hopefully it won't take too long until we can finally create our first HC character in WoW and WoW classic! I am super stoked about it!
Since we have to wait until June 6 to play Diablo 4, you can take your time and make up your mind which class you want to play when the game finally releases!