World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore: An Unexpected Return to its Roots

    The past few days I've gotten the World of Warcraft bug again. It's been one of my favorite games of all time, if my playtime and sheer number of times I've returned to the MMO over the span of my life are anything to go off of. I started playing retail back in Cataclysm, the third expansion, that bid a more or less fond farewell to the Azeroth of yore. I've played off and on since then, playing for a month or two each expansion, never getting to the endgame or raid content, but feeling like I had gotten good value for it. Across the years and through various characters I had seen little glimpses of what the original World of Warcraft played like, mostly through professions, which I never found particularly useful or meshed well with questing. It was with this inexperience that I approached World of Warcraft Classic. I didn't play any of this offshoot branch of WoW when it launched and remained intrigued but uninterested as it went through the first two expansions, so I'm not sure what I was thinking when I saw the unveiling of the new "Hardcore" branch of WoW Classic (For those of you keeping score that is four separate playerbases across the game; one in retail in the recent Dragonflight expansion, one in WoW Classic, one in WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King, and one in WoW Classic Hardcore), but something about the premise of single life characters intrigued me enough to give it a month.

Right off the bat what struck me was how much slower and deliberate the game plays, both because of the antiquated by modern standards gameplay of 2004, but also the high level of danger and risk management present in even the most mundane of 'Kill x critter' quests. Caught off guard, a simple one-on-one fight between you and boar #346 can become a desperate fight for survival. Each level feels meaningful, but also adds a bit of tension because there will be more abilities you need to find the money to train for. never before have professions really felt worthwhile while leveling, but not so here. I've found that as of writing this, they scale quite wonderfully, able to effectively compliment the gear gained from questing without supplanting it, especially as a warrior. Each lucky weapon or armor or recipe drop feels like a game changer. The questing and stories told are smaller, perhaps more generic, but there's a definite feeling of The Journey of your character. 

 Furthermore, perhaps it is because naturally more players will be playing at lower levels, but the early game is far more lively and positive. I've seen and grouped up with more people in hardcore than I have outside of dungeon finder groups in retail, and unlike retail, where by now each dungeon is a surgical exercise and missteps are bemoaned, here there's a real feeling of the community that the game in the "good old days" supposedly espoused. Sure there's occasionally a bit of dickery, but on the whole the hardcore ruleset seems to have fostered a sense of togetherness and charity in the community. When each quest might be someone's last, people seem more eager to group up, take things slow and steady, and trade or simply give good items away they no longer need. Saving up for that 10,000 gold mount is less pressing, or maybe people just saw that I was playing a warrior and thought "Jesus, this guy needs all the help he can get".

It would be impossible for me to explain what this might mean to 15-year veterans of the game, but I can definitely believe that this was the game that hooked millions in 2004. Honestly, I'd say I'm hooked too. The one-life stipulation is harsh and unforgiving, but even with me literally rolling dice to decide what to play, I still was quickly invested in each run, telling myself that because I found a armor piece of the first enemy that "this was the run". It's not quite crack, but man if I'm pumped to try to get to 20, 30, 40, 50, and finally that vaunted level 60.