After gaining exponential popularity with the World of Warcraft community over the last year-plus, “Hardcore” Classic WoW is finally being recognized as an official game mode by Blizzard Entertainment, the company announced today.
Hardcore WoW, at its simplest, is known for its most trademark rule: death is permanent. Beyond that one guiding principle, there are other stipulations that play their individual parts, but the driving concept of permadeath has always been present in the community-driven game mode.
Up until now, Hardcore WoW Classic had existed as a fan-made concept supported entirely through addons and community efforts. With Blizzard entering the mix, almost all of the rules that the community put in place will continue to be in effect, with some quality-of-life changes also being introduced. For example, high-level mobs will not be able to be leashed past a certain point, and certain spells will also be altered (including Paladin’s controversial “Bubble Hearth”) ability combination.
Another big rule being slightly altered in official Classic Hardcore pertains to dungeons, which were previously only allowed to be completed once per character according to the community rules. In official Hardcore servers, dungeons will have a 24-hour reset timer attached to them for all players who are below the max level of 60.
Related: The best and the worst classes for WoW Classic Hardcore
An additional feature called the “Duel to the Death” will be introduced on official Hardcore realms, allowing players to battle each other in sanctioned PvP. Players who win duels will earn a stacking buff that shows how many characters they’ve sent back to the login screen. These duels will stand in place of battlegrounds, which will not be enabled on official Hardcore servers. Additionally, all PvP combat will be opt-in, with players having to manually flag themselves for PvP by typing the /pvp command.
Blizzard proved that Hardcore has a place among its game’s playerbases with the recent launch Diablo IV. That game accumulated a massive following in the Hardcore department, which plays by many of the same rules, including the driving permadeath feature. In the case of Diablo IV, a massive statue of Lillith was engraved with the names of the first 1,000 players to reach level 100 on Hardcore mode, but it’s unlikely that a statue of Ragnaros (or any other Classic WoW character) is waiting in the wings.
Classic WoW Hardcore will launch on the game’s Public Test Realm tomorrow, June 29. A release date for the game mode has not yet been announced, although Blizzard intends to launch servers later this year.
