HardCore Without All The Rules?

The current HC rule set on Bloodsail make the game into a single-player adventure. But the best part of WoW is the social interactions! I want to play a perma-death server, but I also want to group with random people I find in the world to kill an elite quest mob, or to help them get to a mining node surrounding by enemies. I want to trade that green two-handed hammer I just found to the struggling Paladin next to me, and now I can’t. I want to run Scarlet Monastery more than once! I want a few pieces of gear from there! I want to be able to make really helpful potions (HC needs them!) and trade them with another player for gathering materials, gold or maybe a nice item they crafted.

There’s this huge swath of the game that gets instantly and permanently closed to you if you join the “HC community” and it feels like it guts the best parts of the Classic leveling experience. I don’t want to just chain run dungeons (they’re actually pretty dangerous!), I don’t want to be handed super good, enchanted leveling gear that trivializes the journey. I don’t want to cheapen the experience. But I also don’t want to spend 190 hours slowly grinding away at yellow monsters and green quests utterly alone, either. That’s not why I play WoW. I could go do a legendary, perma-death Skyrim run if that’s what I was after.

I understand why the “HC community” has the ruleset they do, but on the flipside it totally hollows out the Classic leveling experience I love so much.

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I saw a graphic that indicated the average hardcore death was around level 13. Almost 80% of deaths happen before level 18. No one really cares when a sub-level 18 dies, that’s 10-12 hours of work. And if that’s >80% of the deaths, then yeah, I can see the majority of the deaths being pretty ignorable.

“Oh no, Hammercutie died at level 7 to a Gnarlpine Ambusher! ALL THE TIME LOST!”

The addon should probably filter death announcements under a certain level.

you can choose what level you want to hear the notification at. most people just go for all because it’s fun to spam F when people die :expressionless:

one thing i love about the HC ruleset is that you learn to appreciate things you never have before. there’s a traveling salesman named antonio who travels around westfall/elwynn/redridge. people are constantly asking “where’s antonio” because he actually sells good stuff from time to time. imagine that. you would NEVER care one iota about the location of a traveling salesman NPC on a normal server.

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There’s a random orc merchant outside of Tarren Mill that sells a 2.0 sec attack speed green dagger that’s better than almost anything you can get up to that point. I make a note to check it frequently on rogue characters. So yes, people do that without HC.

P.S. Looked it up “Broad Bladed Knife” sold by Ott in Hillsbrad.

I’m playing a LotR challenge on BB because that’s where the challenge creator rolled on, and it was labelled the RP server.

Only realized it was the unofficial HC server afterwards.

But some people still want to play on the server for… what it was actually labelled for. Don’t know why people can’t roll on it if they have no plans to do HC challenge?

That said, for the most part, HC players are super chill - at least in Teldrassil. There’s a bit of ribbing people who aren’t doing HC and are simply playing normally, but not at all like what I see on the forums sometimes. It’s unfortunate that the HC community has driven most of the Era RP community off the server, though - would rather the single RP server for Classic actually… have RP going on.

Would be nice if they would actually designate a HC server.

Hey, might be interested in joining that eventually, if you do start it up!

Wanting to finish the LotR challenge first, but I’d planned to give some HC rules a shot after - but some of them just don’t really sound fun, and I’m not into the whole “join a HC guild so your progress can be tracked” mentality that a lot of HC players have. I like some of its rules for the challenge and unique way to play the game, but others just seem arbitrary and against the spirit of an MMO.

they can if they want, i just personally don’t see the point. if you’re not doing the HC challenge you’ll have a better time on Mankrik.

That’s fine, you don’t have to see the point! Just felt it was a little disingenuous to say there’s no point playing on BB if people aren’t doing the HC challenge, specifically. It’s marked as the RP server… which, if someone wants to participate in RP, would be the natural server pick.

I think I’m more confused why HC players decided the RP server was the ‘best’ server to make into the unofficial HC server. Was it just the lowest population at the time, or something?

All that said, I’m having a fine time on BB despite the HC people all around me. LotR challenge is its own type of “HC” challenge in some ways, but I’m still not doing a HC challenge with the addon and all. Don’t see why I’d need to roll on a non-RP server when I like RP and want to play my little LotR challenge on the RP server, so I could RP in my off time.

Just a very odd take, is all.

How can we take the M out of MMORPG

Oh God is this true?

I’m actually finding my hardcore experience to be the most social I’ve ever had in wow. People are always talking. When someone dies it’s almost like a bonding experience. Since we’re all doing the same kind of challenge, there is a connection that we are all part of.

You don’t have to form a party and focus the same mob to have a social experience. Not at all.

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There are a lot Youtube videos about the ‘drama’ in the HC discord. Videos of it’s deaths being its owns fault, such as pulling two reapers in the cornfield in Westfall, then approving its own appeals.

yup

look, I was anti-HC for awhile and disparaged them on the forums too. but once you give it a try, you’ll see it’s a ton of fun. almost like a whole new game

stop knockin it until you try it

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yeah ok bro. screenshots or it didn’t happen
you’re probably talking about some disconnection death

oh you messed up now buddy :expressionless:

Ive already flagged this guy. Just look at the guild name, his toon name, and the constant referencing of a trans person as ‘it’ and you know what he is here for.

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I mean maybe he thinks it’s inappropriate to use gender defining pronouns. Just assuming someone’s gender is hate speech.

Yeah I’m sure thats it. Oh look, he already deleted the TikTok he posted.

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How do people like that get to post TikToks and after all of these years I can’t even post a simple link? :thinking:

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You can do this on any sever. Why do you need something to police you?

Ironman challenge was the real hardcore wow. What you guys are doing today is at best softcore.