I love playing hardcore. I have a 60 Hunter that I killed Ragnaros on on Skull Rock, and a few friends and I have all rolled fresh on Doomhowl and are having a blast. The added challenge makes the game so much more engaging for us.
The one thing I miss is PvP. Since Vanilla I played WoW mainly to PvP, from TM-SS skirmishes to BGs to Arenas. With the release of the anniversary servers and the philosophy of allowing some changes (dual spec, group finder), I’d like to propose another for us HC PvP fans:
Sparring Grounds!
Sparring Grounds would just be Battlegrounds, except instead of dying you become incapacitated and get sent back to the spirit healer. Teams from the same faction could fight each other for “practice.”
I’m not sure about the ramifications of having the PvP ranking system and gear on a HC server, but at the very least we could grind BG reps and get those rewards, and have some fun where the stakes aren’t perma-death.
I’d love to see Blizzard implement something like this in tandem with the other anniversary servers.
So then this idea is just while in battlegrounds hardcore is turned off. I think also a crazy idea you could do for hardcore is “winning team survives”
RBG only no random queues and death is disabled during the game but the losing team has their characters die.
The skirmish/sparing option for pvp gear just opens up BGs as the primary gearing option if it’s risk free why would you mess around in BRD when you can rank up and purchase R10 pvp gear.
Then having made pvp gear freely availible it becomes expected. Why would you risk taking anyone you are expecting/relying on to keep you alive into dungeon or raid who doesnt have at least R10 pvp gear (insert toxic gate keeping rank of your choice).
Why do people keep trying to make HC not HC? if you want to die in battlegrounds, there are plenty of servers that allow it, you can even free transfer your HC character to them.
All deaths in HC should always be final, that includes all PvP deaths.
BGs in HC servers should be for fun and bragging rights only. If not you’d create a compulsory, and non lethal way of gearing up characters. And players not wanting to do BGs would be totally left behind/out. Let the ranks persist through death, so that you could buy gear on the normal realms, but do not let PvP gear enter the HC realms, please.
Hardcore battlegrounds should be Hardcore deaths. Only change should be no new players allowed in once the game starts. Just a fight to death. One team vs the other without any new players joining.
But limit the concept to in-faction practice/training. So instead of being matched up against players of the opposing faction, your sent up against your fellow Horde or fellow Alliance. Similar to dueling, but in a grander scale.
Horde vs Alliance “sparring ground” doesn’t make much sense for this era.
Really seems like PvP will never happen on a HC server without BGs being an exception to death.
Perhaps make BGs cost gold/silver/mats to enter (increases w level and maybe even rank) and the winning team keeps the gold?
Alternatively you can you can add a buff/debuff for win/losing a BG, perhaps an increased rep bonus or increased mats collection or something for the winners and opp for losers.
This way there is still something at stake for winning or losing but it’s not so severe on HC that people just don’t do it. The cost to enter the match also means that it won’t really be a compulsory gear farm.
You could also keep the deaths real and not allow replacements as a toggle and perhaps increase the rewards for winning in this mode, esp rep gains with PvP factions and honor gains.
I’m all for having BGs in Hardcore but they need to turn off all rewards and XP earned from them.
As long as BGs give rewards, they become a work around to normal Hardcore play where you are now able to level and gain items without any risk to your character whatsoever. That goes completely against what hardcore is about.
So all rewards that arent titles and tabards need to be disabled. BGs would just be for fun.
why not open bgs without perma death but have them give 0 xp or gear, just something to do, before someone says skirms , forget it , not the same as a bg queue.
It’d be a guaranteed/safe way to gear up after hitting 60 before touching content. A lot of the PvP gear either compete with out outclass early raid gear for most classes.
I have no problems with the concept of sparring grounds where death isn’t a thing, but the rewards either need to be non-existent or cosmetic in nature. Being able to safely gear yourself up doesn’t need to exist in HC.