Do you play Hardcore in Diablo 3?

In World of Warcraft, “hardcore” is a term often found opposite “casual” in those heated debates about whether time spent should be equal to rewards received. But in Diablo 3, “hardcore” isn’t a player-generated term to describe other players — Hardcore is a specific game mode.

Once a Hardcore Diablo 3 character dies, it’s gone forever. Items equipped or in your bags are lost, and should you wish to start again, you’ll have to start back at level 1 (any Paragon levels achieved, however, will carry over to a new Hardcore character). Customer Service won’t revive any fallen Hardcore characters either, but you can still glance at them in your Hall of Fallen Heroes category of your profile.

“Softcore” is what players call the regular Diablo 3 game mode, to contrast with Hardcore. In Softcore, you can die and resurrect as many times as you want, much like WoW allows. If you’re resurrecting yourself, you can choose whether to resurrect at your corpse, at the last checkpoint, or in town. Player party members can also resurrect you by clicking on your banner that spears your corpse and completing a long cast.

In Diablo 3, player characters share Paragon levels and stash (what WoW would call your bank) across a ‘core. That is, all Softcore characters share with other Softcores, and all Hardcores share with other Hardcores. During a Season, seasonals share with other seasonals in their respective ‘cores; after the Season is finished, those characters become part of the main ‘core.

So which Diablo 3 mode do you play — Hardcore, Softcore, or both? I have a full set of level 70 Softcores, one of each class. I had to quit at my class collection of Hardcores in order to make room for my Season play. But that’s OK — all my seasonal characters are Hardcore now, so I don’t shed tears on purposefully killing them off to free up character slots.