World of Warcraft has continuously evolved throughout the course of its rich 19-year history. Whether it’s at the hands of the developers or the game’s community, WoW has always found a way to be enriched, despite (or perhaps because of) its status as one of the longest-running legacy titles in online gaming.
Next week, on Aug. 24, a new twist on Classic WoW will arrive in the form of official Hardcore servers. This game mode will keep almost everything WoW players know and love about the game intact, but with one major added factor: When your character dies, they die for good.
While this game mode has been popular with the community on an unofficial basis through addons and custom rulesets for at least the last year, official servers present an opportunity for Blizzard to provide structure to a community that’s been nothing but passionate about its endlessly replayable game. And if the devs are going to get it right, it starts with listening to those passionate people.
Blizzard already proved it could sustainably support a game with a “Hardcore” mode earlier this year when Diablo 4’s deathless mode skyrocketed in popularity alongside that game’s launch. And while the WoW Classic devs said they were more in-tune with the requests of their own game’s community than those of Diablo’s, it’s still easy to draw lines between the two games—particularly the throughline of their most basic rule: permadeath.
“Most of our inspiration on WoW Hardcore has come from the community, and all of [its] push around it,” Linny Cooke Saverline, game producer on WoW Classic Hardcore, told Dot Esports in a group interview earlier today. “We approached Hardcore WoW as its absolute own entity and picked up a couple of different things that worked for our community. We wanted to focus on this being casual friendly.”
Perhaps the most clearly defined way that the Classic devs are making the game less crushing (especially after a character’s death) is by still giving players access to their characters after they die and allowing them to transfer them over to Classic-era servers.
“What we really wanted to put together was a solid foundation of a Hardcore sandbox for players to be able to create their own Hardcore experience in,” Cooke Saverline said. “And if players want to put more restrictions on themselves, they are very welcome to do that.”
It’s nothing new for gamers to take their favorite games and squeeze their boundaries artificially in an effort to increase the difficulty. Whether it’s the Pokemon community and its invention of “Nuzlocke” runs or the Resident Evil community’s “knife-only” challenges, gamers have consistently tried to push the limits of what they play. The WoW community is no different.
With such a time investment like Classic WoW laid out in front of them, though, it’s hard to tackle it all. That’s why the devs are insisting that Hardcore players spread out their journey and take this upcoming high-risk adventure at their own pace.
“I think we all saw in 2019 when a lot of players were in a rush to get to max level and it was all about killing Ragnaros first—that’s not what we want to emphasize,” Tim Jones, senior technical designer on WoW Classic Hardcore, told Dot Esports.
With that in mind, the devs implemented systems like the 24-hour lockout on all dungeons while leveling, as well as a full release of all Classic content at launch. With the full slate of all Classic dungeons and raids being available upon the opening of Hardcore servers, the dev team hopes players will look at the new mode as a more “evergreen” source of content that players will continuously come back to as opposed to rushing through as fast as possible.
Still, that’s not going to stop people from running as many dungeons as they can to get pre-raid best-in-slot gear and eventually try to clear Naxxramas within the first two server resets. So, if grinding 20 hours a day is your vibe, you’re still more than welcome to do so.
Related: Official WoW Classic Hardcore rules explained: Deaths, PvP, dungeons, and more
If there’s one note that the WoW Classic dev team continuously sang throughout our hour-long interview with them, it’s that the Hardcore version of the game is a “love letter to the community,” according to Jones, and that the game mode wouldn’t even be a reality if it wasn’t in such popular demand with the game’s player base.
“We go where the people are,” Jones said. “If there is a desire and a clamoring, we will do our best to support what the community wants. That continues to be something that we really want to be one of the pillars of what we believe in on the Classic team. It’s why our team even exists in the first place. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the community yelling at the top of their lungs that they wanted official Classic servers to begin with.”
When it comes to balancing the game and providing updates, the devs said they’re not going to be afraid to take a “reactive” approach and listen to the demands, requests, and outcries of the community. This player-driven approach has worked wonders for the retail WoW team throughout Dragonflight, and there’s a hope that the strategy can carry over into the Classic side of things as well.
“We love to listen to what the community wants,” Jones said. “Classic was born of community hype and excitement, and we want to listen and deliver on what the community is excited about.”
