The Lure of Hardcore - Why it is so Sucsessful (IMO)

Community General Discussion
1

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the Classic Hardcore Challenge recently & why it has proven to be so popular. I believe hardcore is largely responsible for bringing people back to to classic era WoW & even WoW in general, my self included. I have recently returned to WoW after a 1.5 year hiatus, specifically to play hardcore. I thought I would share my thoughts on the success of Hardcore & the lure it has on players.

-Humble new beginnings! — When creating a new character on retail, it doesn’t quite feel like a brand new character or a fresh start, not really. Unless of course you are playing on a new battlenet account. Otherwise there is just a lot of account wide baggage attached to each character you make. From heirlooms & appearances, mounts & battle pets, flightpaths & toys, to achievements & titles… Being able to create a new character, deck out 10+ item slots with heirlooms, equip a tabard for a faction the character has yet to meet or interreact with, and to display the “Explorer” title even though my newly created level 1 Goblin only has Kezan discovered on the map. Then upon reaching level 10 you can choose from a list of your favourite epic mounts to perch upon, lets say “Grand Expedition Yak”, & while I’m at it I may as well transmogrify my weapon & armor to resemble the appearance of a Firelands or Throne of Thunder heroic raider… This has always felt a little off to me.

Prior to the Mists of Pandaria expansion, before the advent of mounts & achievements going account wide, each character was more or less self contained & represented what that specific character had actually seen & done within the world of Warcraft. I think there is a lot of value in this. There is a certain call to adventure & a sense of satisfaction that is achieved from starting anew. The Classic Hardcore Challenge leans into where as a new retail adventure struggles to capture the same emotion. I believe a big part of this is the fact that progress is tied to that character, & ultimately has the potential to die with that character… Whether that be due to a hardcore death or you simply reroll on a new character. Previous ventures & forays can not aid you here, even if it is just a cosmetic costume… Be that wearing a full set of dungeon set one or a full set of Fang or Defias armor. Riding upon an Unpainted Mechanostrider or the Deathcharger’s Reins. Summoning a Mechanical Chicken or a Hyacinth Macaw at your side… All of this holds more weight & feels more meaningful knowing that your character actually has it, actually obtained it, achieved it… That its not just an account wide item which can be used by any character you create.

-Character progression is meaningful! — Sometimes it is easy to forget that World of Warcraft is an RPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game to be exact. Arguable since the Warlords of Draenor expansion, the game has morphed into what would be better dubbed an MMORG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Raid Game. The core essence & game play of most RPGs, other than lore/story, is character progression. In a good or successful RPG, character progression is front & centre & starts right off the bat, NOT after 20 or 30 hours playtime when you reach what is considered “end game content”. Creating builds, picking profession, obtaining gear, all of this matters at all stages of the game, especially when the playing Hardcore. Making meaningful decisions that impacts your characters progression is undeniably compelling, be it at level 16 or level 60.

Needless to say I believe heirloom items are extremely damaging in this regard. As pointed out in the previous section, just slap heirloom gear into 10+ of your characters item slots & away you go. That gear will scale with your character for the majority of your journey. Not only does this take away any meaningful decisions about gear choices as you level, but it also removes the visual feedback of character progression. After all, your heirloom geared character at level 50 for the most part looks exactly the same as he/she did at level 10.

Also speaking of scaling, since the Legion expansion, the world of Warcraft now pretty much scales with your character. Though this does allow for greater player choice on what zones to level in & in what order, keeping content relevant for longer. I can’t help but think this isn’t a particularly useful feature, considering how lightning fast & efficient levelling is in retail anyway. But what I find particularly damaging about this feature is that it goes against & even undoes the sense of character progression, as when your character gains a level so do all the mobs… the world levels up with you. I actually made this point in response to another post discussing level squishing…

-What’s the rush?! — A wise Pandaren once said “Slow down, life is to be savoured”… I think Hardcore really does speaks to this & even encourages it. After all, it only takes one hasty mistake for it to all be over, & your back levelling in the forest of Elwyn or the plains of Mulgor. Racing to endgame on auto pilot would be a very risky strategy, instead a hardcore player is rewarded by preparation… Taking time out to work on your professions & keep them up-to-date. Taking time to farm cloth to produce bandages. Taking time to fish & cook food for bonus buffs or to help keep costs down as you wont need to buy food from the nearby innkeeper, thus having more coin to spend on skills &/or gear, also if your a hunter then the food you fish & cook will help keep your animal companion happy & healthy. Crafting professions can be really handy, bridging the gap between upgrades, lets be honest gear obtained through quest rewards can be infrequent & don’t cover all slots in the early stages of the game, in classic WoW at least. Taking the time to gain an extra level or two before tackling a particular quest could be the difference between life & death… Whether that be because you gained a new or higher rank skill with the levels, or because you didn’t aggro that extra mob or patrol because you are higher level.

In summary playing hardcore is a very pleasant change of pace that encourages, or at least appreciates a slow & steady approach. Hardcore really does help to reinstall joy into simpler aspects of the game, from looting a 10 slot bag from a random mob, to seeing you first superior or epic (if your really lucky) world drop.

Hardcore isn’t really adding anything new to the game, but rather re-emphasizing what was already there, that many players overlooked in their haste to reach end game.

5 Likes
2

To sum up this essay, it’s popular because everything brings a sense of accomplishment due to the risk of permadeath. The other stuff are just a consequence of this.

The majority of this community avoids games with risk and loss, and have no idea how rewarding they feel.

3 Likes
3

The reason Hardcore attracts gamers is the same reason classic did, the world is actually challenging. Permadeath just adds to that challenge.

The solution for retail is to make the world harder again. Fixing balance, making the world content harder, and doing something about leavers in keys would probably solve 90% of this games problems, but the sad thing is that people would probably STILL be unhappy. This game has been around for almost 20 years, and like most things of this vintage, it can’t please everyone.

4

You didn’t sum it up at all.

The real TL;DR I would say is:

  1. It’s fun to start over. Like, really over. Create a completely new identity and partaking in the struggles of such a thing. A new blank slate in every sense of the word. Account-wide things has made this impossible in retail short of making a new WoW account.
  2. A criticism of the levelling, including scaling and broken professions and heirlooms and many other such things.
  3. The gameplay is too fast and does not encourage taking breaks naturally because you don’t need food and an arrow always points you in the right direction, so you really have no need at all to work anything out.

And hardcore, because it makes you start over again and again and again, discourages just rushing to endgame and therefore all these systems start to work.

And I think he has a good point.

Now, there’s always gonna be people saying “well just play with RestedXP, find the best build on a website, and send all sorts of bags and gear over from your main and gz now Classic is broken as well.”

Yeah, good job I guess. Let’s just take bad practices that ruin the game because some people do it and just blanket apply it to everybody else regardless of whether or not they think it’s any fun.

EDIT: Sorry I’m editing a lot Anna, it’s just adding opinions, I’m not changing the TLDR. :slight_smile:

I think that hardcore unfortunately has some problems where it removes some of the things that makes WoW great as well. There are simply just some systems that it disallows. But it’s certainly doing some interesting things to the experience.

1 Like
5

Most of those are “fresh start” things and not really related to hardcore mode -except the one about scaling being always unbalanced during leveling, but that’s because blizz would rather make it too easy than too hard. Fewer complaints.

You can’t recreate permadeath by adding difficulty because it’s about risk and loss, concepts that don’t exist on retail.
People (including devs) need to be aware of the difference between challenge and annoyance.
For instance, they could increase the HP of mobs by 5 times and call it harder, but all it would do is make the game more annoying.
Another good example was the Maw. Was it difficult, or just obnoxious? Personally I think it wasn’t risky/hard enough to feel like an accomplishment, but it was tedious enough to be annoying.

6

Are you serious?

Hardcore mode is precisely what causes a repeating pattern of fresh starts. Hardcore can’t work on retail because you cannot do a fresh start.

7

No doubt it has an audience and fan base and I’m happy that individuals enjoy it
I do feel that it has been massively propped up , and potentially even bandwagoned by the top streamers of WoW just to harvest views while it is hot

I find original WoW vanilla & Classic ‘hardcore’ enough so I really do not see the appeal
Accidentally aggroing a mob or having some crucial miss or be resisted isn’t my idea of fun, especially when you have to delete the character. I hate losing progress too , unless it takes no time at all to get it back

I don’t think HC will be that popular at all really , but as always I could be wrong

2 Likes
8

you can’t be more specific and subjective than that, if you’d actually seen hardcore community and how toxic they can be you’d realise that the worst thing that could happen to hardcore andy is loss of the character, especially character that got past 40. The whole final goal of hardcore is making to the hall of fame.

9

What do you mean toxic? Losing 100 hours of progress is gonna set you flyin’ right off the hinges, too.

But you’ll calm down. And when you do, well there’s a new start again.

Diablo players know what this is about very well.

10

Many players don’t go hardcore though in Diablo.

1 Like
11

And many players do not go hardcore in Warcraft.

As a matter of fact, I don’t. I still think the OP has a point though. There is something endearing here that hardcore brings out even though these things aren’t really caused by hardcore in itself. It’s because it’s changing how the… hardcore players, no pun intended, approach the game. They approach it like a casual would, basically - because the levelling itself is now in focus. It’s not an obstacle.

I think what’s happening is basically that hardcore is forcing players who would otherwise rush to end-game to not do so, and then vanilla’s levelling is revealed for what it is. And what it is is pretty good, turns out.

1 Like
12

Nah, half of them are a bunch of elitist jerks, unhinged outrages is cherry on the cake

13

It’s something different that people try, that’s not to say people stick at it.

14

Imho they wouldn’t stick with “end game” either if it wasn’t for the gear.:slightly_smiling_face:

15

It’s successful because content creators make content out of it which entices non content creators to join in.

Ultimately playing a version of wow where you can’t die is pointless, you’ll never raid anything where there is a risk of death, you’ll never engage in pvp.

Though at the end of the day, we all play games to effectively waste our time so, it’s just another way to do that.

16

If you don’t like gearing and doing harder content then no it’s not going to have much appeal to you.

The gear you gather on the way helps you do the harder content. You can go as far as you want/feel comfortable. But it’s not something you can do in the gear you cap in.

17

You completly missed my point…nvm.:slightly_smiling_face:

18

The main lure is surely the drama. Seeing some guy go absolutely bananas because he died. People love stuff like that.

19

You saw that with the buffs, people trying to get to the raids with buffs in Classic only to be killed and lose them. This ofc has much more impact.

20

I can see the appeal as a one off challenge, something to do whilst Retail is in the doldrums.
I don’t think this has any appeal as a long term playstyle.

Challenging content is all well and good when you can choose to play it. Many players enjoyed the Mage Tower as it is quite a challenge. Not many players would enjoy this level of challenge constantly.
M+ works with this in mind, you choose how hard the dungeons are by choosing which key level you want to do. Although this format of dungeoneering has its own difficulties around group formation.

I do think open world mobs in Retail could be more challenging but also should have lower mob density. Fewer fights but tougher ones would make the game better.
Saying that I wouldn’t go too far with introducing challenge into the general main content (questing and open world).
Also Bliz has a tendancy to confuse frustration / annoyance with challenge. The maw had a lot of frustrating features such as death tax, no mounting, convoluted terrain et al.

2 Likes