. Private Ivan, Private Taras! You are a summons. The agenda in WOW. (Against the backdrop of the fuss, the voices: “Not in wow, but on wow”, “boss, I am already passing combat coordination in Dota 2”).

Hello everyone, Retro Paladin again with you again. Since the time, when I last posted on Stopgame, a lot of water has flowed. A game for reptiloids was added to the murmur. But even despite this, Wow Dragonflight is dying. Dragonfla bloggers sniff a copywriter, and pretend that they always loved the classics.

And all, absolutely everyone dance with elbows. That is, they play hardcore. Hardcore hardcore. Hard than my life in Russia.

Rather, the main streamers play hardcore, and the rest look.
You can easily verify this yourself if you go to the Secondary General section.
Even the famous blogger Ilya Mendelssohn honored the Great Hardcore, but only in the fourth diablo. And now, also nearly, on August 25, they opened the hardcore regime servers for the classic WWII.

History of hardcore

Hardcore is a mode of game with one life, when after the death of the character you start the game again. It is also called permadeath.

Hardcore increases immersion in the game. It becomes more strategic, you need to be attentive to details and calculate the moves ahead. And battles with opponents guarantee an influx of adrenaline.

The disadvantages of such a solution are obvious: playing hardcore is like driving on an electric scooter to Evgeny Ponasenkov for an autograph. You must be a risky guy.

The mode with one life was a common thing at the dawn of computer games, in the era of slot machines. Wikipedia bashfully says that it was, because the machine guns could not maintain game progress. But in fact, this regime was used to knock out more money from players.

Only one life, along with random generation of levels, is one of the distinctive features of the Roguelike genre or “pants”. That is, such games as Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Adom or Pixel Dungeon for Android. True, now it is customary to call "sangs" to almost any Arcad, but this is a topic for a separate article.

Diablo Ecshen-RPG developers and its followers, such as Path of Exile, Torchlight, Grim Dawn adapted Roguelike for a wide audience. But along with the advent of juicy graphics, the genre lost the inevitability of death, though in most “diabloids” mortality still remained in the form of a separate option.

Sometimes in the games of this genre you can gain fat and more or less defending yourself from death, like in a series of Diablo, sometimes hardcore is more like a Russian roulette, like in Path of Exile. But the essence of the action remained unchanged.

Permadeath is also found in other games: for example, the mode can be included in the games-and-powers such as minecraft and Terraria. Survival simulators, such as Long Dark and Dont Starve, are close to sanglics.

Of course, the characters also die in strategies, role-playing games and various hybrids of these genres, such as Pillars of Eternity, Darkest Dungeon, Battle Brothers, X-Com, Jagged Alliance. True, when there are a lot of characters, talking about hardcore does not make sense, because the game does not end with the death of an individual character. But you can still stay in the damned world, which you yourself have created.

For MMORPG, irreversible death used to be the norm. Khuke after death was practiced even in the ancestors of the genre – role -playing games with a text interface or MUD, which in Rus’ lovingly called muds.

In the 1997 Ultima Online, the Death led to the loss of all objects, but you still remained alive. In the modern heir to Ultima – Albion Online, this feature is preserved.

In the early versions of the Korean Lineage 2, after death from the player with some chance, objects fell. In addition, a fair amount of precious experience was lost.

I remember that in the classic version of the Lineage sample 2014 you could even have expensive weapons. When with deafening blum The weapon that you earned for a couple of months falls from you, it is very offensive. Other weak in spirit after this threw the game.

Still full -fledged Permadeath was in the Japanese Wizardry Online. But the graphics of the level of the second curling and the prefix interface did their job – the game closed.

So it turned out https://kingdom-casino.uk/ that from the idea of ​​irreversible death the creators of the MMO genre eventually refused. Now hardcore can only be called the pixel Ned-Mormorpg Realm of the Mad God. Well, in another grandfather of the genre, Runecape, the mode with one life can be connected in the form of a separate challenge.

Although our people have Runescape not too popular. The fact is that this was the first full -fledged MMORPG, going right in the browser, without installing the client. Therefore, in the West, office plankton played massively in it. But because of the restrictions on the browser, the graphics in the game were a wretched even by the standards of the beginning of the two thousandths, and we simply did not take the game seriously.

The classic World of Warcraft, which now seems to some a difficult game, was originally conceived as a simplified adventure, with sparing fines – after death, the equipment was just breaking up, which had to be repaired for money.

But modern players with their playfulness and fast Internet, the classic seemed too simple. They began to look for new challenges, and in the end they thought of Hardcore.

District began to spin the streamer Kargoz. Over and over again, pumping characters in mode with one life, he quickly attracted the attention of the audience, who stunted the Stremer’s character today or not. Other streamers began to notice that they served more with this upstart and also scorched. And then the audience pulled herself up: “Streamers play hardcore, you need to repeat the streamers”.

Over time, the rules of hardcores took shape, a site with a rating of the strongest has appeared. To play, it was necessary to put a special addon limiting trade and fixed your death. To which, by the way, many questions have accumulated. There were stubbornly rumors that close to the leadership of the community abolished their deaths, as if nothing was.

And the popularity of the regime has grown so much that the near -zard finally ripe to a separate server. Well, this is of course a level, given that a middle -term hand programmer on a pirate server can add this mode in about a week.

Bluezard is not the first time trying to introduce hardcore. The first attempt ended with Falstart: at the end of 2021, the “Iron Soul” mode was added to the game. But he was not interested in the people: they played hardcores on ordinary servers, interspersed with other players, at the death of the character did not leave, you just failed the challeng, and became an ordinary player and this, you must agree, is completely different. Well, the reward for the Challenge made was very weak, and did not cost effort.

Do we need hardcore at all?

In general, talk about hardcore is part of a broader wide discussion about the complexity of games. This is an eternal dispute between two categories of players: conditional subpopivas casuals that strive to relax after work and turn off the brain as much as possible, and hardcore gamers for whom the game means something more. This category of players looks at the game as a challenge to abilities, intelligence, reactions. And someone just wants to escape to the game world from everyday grayness.

Casual gamers of course more. On their side, marketers of expensive projects. But the opinions of hardcores are weighty, because there are many of them among streamers, bloggers, influensers.

For example, the great Nikolai Dybovsky, the author of the Mora.Utopia advocates the irreversibility of death in games. He believes that in the usual game you are doomed to win, just a winner of time. But in real life it does not happen. And therefore you need to complicate.

I can add from myself that in the long run, hardcore is unlikely to take off in Wow. The essence of MMORPG is in the accumulation and preservation of wealth. Private leader is a chipmunk that drags everything into the mink. He doesn’t like losing belongings. Therefore, the future of MMO, and indeed expensive games from large studios are more likely a supercasual Palia. But at the level of small indie games, the difficulty will continue to meet.

But I warned.

But the very fact that even hardcore can be sold, shows that I was right in my prophetic text of 2019, when I said that the developers should not chase the casual player so much, because by and large he does not care what to play, but they need to focus on the streamers, that is, the leaders of the opinions of opinions. And streamers will be able to sell anything.

The impact on the minds has a small circle of bright personalities, or experts. They are imitated, envied, listened to their advice. The author recommends: in order to advance the product or idea to the masses, I don’t definitely like the crowd, you need to please a small circle of experts, and they will affect the rest. And in the world of video games, such experts are hardcore gamers. They are picky, understand games, have their own opinion on each issue, which they actively express on game forums. In addition, they conduct direct broadcasts on Twich and YouTube and affect the brains of citizens live.

Grandfather Makar, 2019

The new mode is gaining momentum

In the European region, two rather densely stuffed servers are now available: NEKROSH and StITCHES. I ran a little on the test server before the start. At first, the starting zones were dotted by the dead. In the chat, they explained to me that this happened because of a new chip, a duel to death-Mc’Gora. The loser is removed, and the bodies remain for some time lying on a raw land.

Well, a duel is a thing of course funny, but not too inspiring. From the award you have only the enemy’s ear, and then if the enemy is above the level of the level 19. In short, purely streamer joke. And besides her, nothing new was brought. There is no PVP on the server, there are no battle fields either.

Death here seems to be final, but not really. After forever death The character becomes a wandering spirit. Old Blizard, as I know them, would add to the spirit so that you can howl, scare the players. And here it’s just an observer.

The deceased character can be transferred to any old server of the classical era of choice. And this is probably the best idea that visited the heads of the creators from Blizzard for all the time, given that many will not want to part with the belongings.

Meanwhile, a drama has already played inside the community. Some of the players believe that hardcore was not “hardcore” enough. After all, here you can join groups, exchange items and trade at auction. The people are also outraged that it is possible to use petrification infusions that give temporary invulnerability and at the same time get out of the raid.

Still, for the new player, the new mode will be damn complicated, especially if you want to speed up the pumping process. Items at the auction are rare, and therefore expensive, infusions of petrification will cost a whole state. Since the server is on the very last patch, and all the dungeons are already available, the raids will initially gather where it is difficult to die, and the infusions of invulnerability are not needed: in Zul’gurub, or the ruins of AN’Kihihiyah.

Of course, you can try to buy gold for real money, but there will be little currency farmers. Where are they, and where is hardcore. And it is difficult to start a bot on such a server.

The dungeons easily you do not finish. They can be passed only once a day. “Drag” the group of a character older than ten levels – the younger players simply will not get experience.

I’m not talking about "griffers" – fans to spoil others life. For example, the griffer can play for the doctor and at the most crucial moment, in the thick of enemies he will stop healing and run to the exit. Then your entire group will be buried and in its place several sad lost souls will be formed at once.

As for the game alone, the developers have already hinted to add solo-mode to the game. In addition, neither the rules nor the old addon from that very community of hardcores nobody canceled.

It turns out that the hardcore at the nearbyzard, not so simple. And if you compare with what everyone was used to on pirate servers, and completely complicated. After all, here you can die even after the capture of the final, level 60.

For and against

So what are the pros and cons of hardcore?

Firstly, this is much more interesting to play. Immersion in the game deeper. The joy of achieving the maximum level above.

Another plus: if we talk about official servers, then this is a fresh start where everyone starts with a clean sheet. And the servers will be felt like new for a long time, because progress will be slow, people will constantly die and start again.

The third plus: if you do not like to rush, then hardcore is your choice. The possibility of death makes you plan your actions. A leisurely game is encouraged here.

Cons are also obvious. I have only one question, Rusichs, Svyatoruz, the inhabitants of Ancient Rus’: is it not dolling? Give more full -fledged thousand rubles a month for an ancient, dust -covered game.

On the other hand, the classics of the Navy can still be bought in the form of a time-card. And on the Russian account too. At least get high from this, brothers.

Another drawback: the classic fault was not balanced around the regime with one life. First of all, group pumping in the dungeons suffers. If someone has a weak Internet in the group, or someone decides to substitute you-the chances of dying are high. Do you want reliable pumping – rely only on yourself. The problem is that group trips to the dungeons bring most of the joy of the game in the classics, and here you lose it.

Well, the third drawback: if you want to be successful in hardcore, you need to show patience. In order to run over and over again on quests like: “Bring me the skins of twenty wild boars”, you must have a special character warehouse. Sometimes it seems to me that it would be better to all these stuffy autistic-boobies went to the conveyor of the box. There would be at least some benefit from them.

Conclusion

Given all the disadvantages, I myself will not play at the hardcore at all. And if someone caught fire with an idea, I would rather advise diaplane: Diablo 2 or Grim Dawn. It is in the second diablo that the regime with one life is best implemented. True, now buying a diabala remake is not so easy.

In general, you want Hardcore – Go to the Zaporizhzhya Front. Will be for you hardcore, Hehe.