How are you feeling about the WoW Classic Hardcore rules?

In May, Blizzard announced a World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore realm was in development for a summer release, and last week we got a look at the official ruleset and structure of just how Hardcore realms will function. I only recently learned about the community-created Hardcore ruleset that players challenged themselves with and, while it wasn’t something I would take on because I’d be too tempted to continue after my first accidental death at level 12 (everybody gets one, right?), I know that people who love this game want to keep playing it in new and fresh ways — and Hardcore is trying to provide that.

Here is a quick recap of the Hardcore rules:

• Character death is permanent
• You can challenge other players to Duel to the Death, though character PVP is strictly optional
• PVP modes are disabled and PVP flagged quests are no longer needed
• Enemies are on a leash in their zone
• Dungeons are on a timer and players need to be of similar level to prevent power leveling and selling runs
• No buff/debuff limit

I was pleasantly surprised to see many positive or positive-leaning reactions from the player base, though, I think the PVP players are left wanting since PVP modes are basically removed and character duels seem to be more of high-risk, high-reward secondary feature. Of course, you can’t please everybody; I know it’s a trendy thing to immediately deride something because it’s “official” but I think that leaning in to PVE over PVP (while keeping it optional) was the right call to make. You want the mode to be challenging (but not punitive) and excitingly risky without becoming hopeless or meaningless and PVE is the best avenue to do that.

I personally think this ruleset provides a solid, challenging-but-fair structure for every level-1 player at the beginning, but for how long remains to be seen. I have other concerns around the dungeon timer, the level ranges, and how it applies to alternate characters — I know some crafty player is going to find some workaround that will encourage selling runs. I was also thinking about just how trading items and gold would work between high-level players who farm gear to trade to lower-level players, and it seems I wasn’t alone — though Blizzard has admitted that right now this is out of their scope but they’re bouncing ideas on how to implement something in the future.

All in all, I think the Hardcore ruleset is a decent start to a new challenge to WoW Classic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Hardcore ruleset, what you like or don’t like about it, and what game aspects you wish were included or removed from the realm.