When does WoW Hardcore release?

It's well on the way.

WoW Classic Zul Gurub Hakkar
Image via Blizzard Entertainment

After becoming massively popular among World of Warcraft players, WoW Hardcore is officially making its way to Classic servers.

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The game mode gained steam at the beginning of 2023, with more and more players and streamers jumping on the hype train. The rules are simple: You create a character on Classic-era servers and enjoy the game as usual, with a few conditions, out of which one stands out—you can’t die, not even once.

When you die in WoW Hardcore, you can still interact with your friends as a ghost, but you won’t be able to come back to life. That’s quite, well, hardcore, as the name suggests, yet it quickly conquered the hearts of WoW players around the world. Here’s when Hardcore hits the live servers.

When does WoW Hardcore release?

WoW Classic Hardcore is coming to the live servers on Aug. 24 at 5pm CT. The server launch date is a little bit earlier than originally anticipated, especially considering it’s less than two months after the developer even announced that it was working on Hardcore servers in the first place.

For the most part, it will work similarly to how the mod ran originally. So start preparing your leveling strategies and make sure you’re as smart and cunning as possible because if you die in Hardcore, there’s no coming back. Your character is dead for good.

What’s the difference between WoW Hardcore and WoW Classic?

WoW Hardcore and WoW Classic are essentially the same game. They are both set in the 2004 version of WoW and have the same classes, specs, and abilities, but WoW Hardcore is a mode where you can’t die.

Once you die, you won’t be able to access your character again, and you’ll have to make a new character and start from level one. This means all your progress and gold earned with the character will be gone and you won’t have access to it. So, I highly advise you to take your time, level carefully, and use all abilities your class has to your advantage.

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Mateusz Miter
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.
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Max Miceli
Senior Staff Writer. Max graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a journalism and political science degree in 2015. He previously worked for The Esports Observer covering the streaming industry before joining Dot where he now helps with Overwatch 2 coverage.
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Izabela Tomakic
Staff Writer & World of Warcraft lead. Izabela has a long history with writing and games like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Fortnite, and The Sims. Before finding her home at Dot Esports in 2021, Izabela was an English teacher and a freelancer at Hotspawn, GGRecon, and Gameranx. In her free time, you’ll find her writing novels, wandering Azeroth, or inting on Summoner’s Rift.
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