Take out the rewards, the exp etc.
Let us use our hard earned loot and characters to have some PvP fun.
Raiding and playing in the open world is always going to have risk. Would be really nice to use the items and time to PvP and give the mode truly unlimited replayability.
The true end would be getting decked out in BIS up to NAXX gear and then PvPing. Maybe consider trying it, or having BG weekends etc.
Firmly believe this would make the mode truly Evergreen and add a little variety.
Answer is the same as always, if you want to PvP roll on a normal server, there simply is no place for non HC content on a HC server.
I don’t see why not. Duels for fun exists, why not BGs for fun? As long as - which OP actually states - we
This way no one has an easy shortcut to phat loot, and no-one feels compelled (or forced even) to PvP.
At least it won’t harm me that the PvP bunch get some fun as well.
I generally agree. It doesn’t take anything away from anyone’s hardcore experience, so why not?
That being said, with no rewards to speak of, it may just become a ghost town. Like maybe at first it would get used a good amount, but as people get bored of the novelty, less and less people play, which degrades the experience, so less people play, etc etc. To counteract that, there would need to be events or some variant of the game mode where you can get rewards, but you actually risk dying. But how much rewards? Does the whole losing team just die? Some percentage of them? Maybe each player has a percent chance to die based on how you did in the battleground? Holy hell, the crying and complaining would never cease.
All that is to say, I’m not opposed to it for some silly, dogmatic reason like “grrr its not TRUE hardcore!” But ultimately its probably no where near the top of the list of things devs could be doing to increase the fun of the game mode.
BGs seem like a silly thing to throw your character’s one life away over 
No death, no reward, no xp … just like a duel - just for fun.
I don’t think it’s fun, as I hate PvP, but I can tell people like it, so why not?
Maybe a tabard for winning X amount of BG’s and not “dying”.
so a BG where nobody’s HP is ever reduced below 1? seems kinda silly
Same as a duel. 1 HP and a forced time-out. I find BGs silly, period. But if some want to play this, I won’t hinder them when there’s no way it hurts, hinders or harms me.
People won’t do it
This, wow players minmax the fun out of everything. No reward treadmill it will be DOA as the people with crap gear don’t want to wait to be farmed by the few raider guilds.
Also the queue times would suck because of vast faction imbalance.
If you want to pvp man up and do a wargame and put your toon on the line.
No softcore bg in hc.
By this logic you should speak up for the abolishing of duels.
Yeah, BGs where you repeatedly die and come back to life are a lot more realistic.
Well duels are against your own side, while BGs are against the other faction. That said I would be ok with abolishing duels and having all duels be Mak’gora, excellent idea.
Are you Bollard?
lol, no, just tossing out an alternative
Duels have always been to 1 hp, bgs have always been to 0. This is not the same thing, sir or ma’am.
WoW has always been a game where you could rezz. HC is not.
This is nothing more than a traditionalist response; you’re ok with people essentially dying via duels in HC because it’s a mechanic that’s always existed in WoW, but you’re not ok with applying the same logic elsewhere because it’s not baseline.
As Vanilla pointed out; HC isn’t baseline either. This is a unique server design and HC BGs could legitimately exist for this kind of server, but would require reimagining them to match server design. Any sane person understands that giving away gear via no risk BGs is bad; once you take away the rewards from BGs the harm you create to the HC environment is exactly zero.
The harm is not zero, once you introduce one exception, then other people will feel that more and more exceptions should be added, and you will get those demanding armor and other things out of BGs. It would never end with just adding SC battlegrounds where you can do all the corpse runs you want. Let HC be HC, no SC battlegrounds.
Slippery slope arguments are a non-starter point for debating. Debate the topic at hand rather than trying to fear-monger that other changes could take place as a result of it.