r/wowhardcore

This race-locked thingy is growing on me. Do you guys wanna create a guild on EU Horde for such? Like I tried to play on NA, but 200+ latency is noticeable.

Please join the conversation to see if we have people who are down.

UPD: I think I've found the guild that suits me: "WE are FORSAKEN"

Their rules:
- self-found mode (meaning you do choose self-found, but you are allowed to group up with other undeads to do dungeons)
- they did not decide yet whether they are turning off self-found on 60 or not

Their officers:
- Bânshée (GM)
- Luxiéla
- Barrowguard
- Creathina

After the sucess of many RP guilds and a few posts requesting similar ones I've decided to create a guild. I will let the community decide, troll race locked or shaman class locked. You have 24 hours to vote!

I will need some help setting it up and running it as I'm not always on classic wow and very new to running a guild.

I am currently leveling to get ready for rfc in the next couple days.

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I forgot I was a horde warrior - thought I was on my alliance alt, and ran right into alliance alterac valley guards and prospector stonehewer. Dazed immediately and a guaranteed death if not for the advanced target dummy.

And they're not just great defense, they're great for offense too. I can comfortably pull 3-4 even on a rogue if I want to use a dummy (up to 5 with sap).

I'm writing this after reading the recent petri post about this SF guy getting killed by his guildies petri'ing out.

I always had the opinion that SF should've never been on the same realm as non SF in the first place. It clashes with the immersion for SF players and from my experience it also pisses off normal players because they're expected to adjust their gameplay to a challenge they never signed up for.

examples: passing on low level BoE's when it's just a couple of silver to you but means the world to a SF player, do you press need even if you have gold from previous runs and could buy the same item on AH? same for chest items. Skipping packs in a dungeon feels fine to people with petris, while it terrifies SF players. Raid loot is impossible to distribute to SF players without precisely planning it out, since you have to loot it on the spot. If your guild decides to let a SF player join, i guarantee you a couple of the 40 people are pissed because this person can't possibly prepare the same consumes as everyone else.

Just look at how PoE does it, they're completely seperate ladders and every player you see in town, is also SF. Of course it's different cause it's not an mmo but it's literally 2 different communities with their own chat channels and everything, because its fundamentally a different experience.

The one problem is that we're fracturing the community even more, which I think is still worth as long as we let players transfer to non SF HC realm whenever they want, this would also allow players to still take SF off at 60 if they want to.

Warning - Oh boy, I guess I had a lot to say. This is long-winded post, if you hate reading, please ignore post.

To start, I know this post will get a lot of down votes and be unpopular. Any time I've voiced my opinion on Petri I'm always immediately downvoted get the same replies "Then just don't use them", "Don't tell me how to play the game", "anyone against petris hasn't raided in Hardcore".

I want to make it clear that I'm not telling anyone how to play the game or telling people not to use petris. I'm stating why I believe it ruins immersion, and in my opinion, ruin the spirit of a hardcore challenge.

Immersion:

I don't know why you all play wow, but for me it's the immersion. The world we live in is pretty F'ed up right now, and of all the video games I've played in my life, World of Warcraft offers the best escape. But, there are things about the game that asks you to use your imagination and work with what the game is showing you. When you spawn into Cold Ridge Valley or North Shire Abbey and see 30 wolves just roaming around in the area the size of a football field, you know that isn't realistic.

There's other things. The Social-aggro range between mobs is entirely unrealistic. I attacked one of the guards at Durnholde Keep yesterday and realized the mob on the other side of the door, about 10 yards away didn't aggro. In reality, the whole Fort would aggro and destroy any attacking party smaller than a raid. There are other examples here but I think you get the picture.

As a player that values immersion, I understand that there are concessions that must be made for gameplay. As in-depth as the world is, of course there are things that are unrealistic for the purpose of player convenience. But, you can work with this and I think there is a nuance to it that the game devs expect you to play to with a little imagination. The game with the help of the player is crafting a story on how this young hopeful recruit through many trials and battle becomes one of the most honorable and powerful warriors in the world. If you meet the game half-way with your imagination, that is the story wow gives you. The best immersive experience in gaming history.

This is supported by the quests. Typically, it takes what? 7 days play time to get to 60? In your starting zones you are often referred to as young [race] or young [class]. In later game quests, they don't refer to you as young anymore. You are a harden veteran. So all these quests of "go kill 10 wolves, that are a 15 seconds walk away", the game is asking you to use your imagination that you are actually out in the wild for days or weeks hunting these creatures down. In my opinion, every quest objective in the game is meant to be looked at in this light.

Non-Hardcore:

I played WoW when it first came out in 2004, then I played it pretty heavily when WotLK came out. During WoTLK I was co-leader of a strong raiding guild that cleared all content before I quit. I remember banging our heads against some raid bosses and dying 20 times before we cleared them. I remember during a 25 man Naxx raid, getting Heigan the Unclean down to about 50% (maybe he was lower, memory shaky and I was focused on healing), but 20 of our guild members died from the safety dance, then myself (healer), the main tank, and 3 dps, took about 10 minutes to finish him off.

I have wonderful memories of those raids, but, our victories came after many many deaths, and there's always that thought in the back of my mind that if this was a movie or a book, we would have been the group wiped out by the bad guys in the opening chapter. We didn't really beat these places, we hit the reset button hundreds of times until we got the results we liked. We rigged the game. There's no immersion in dying to Patchwerk, doing a corpse run, rebuffing, then repeating that process 10 more times until we finally defeat him on the 11th try.

I quit wow for 15 years. I thought my wow days were over because I had gotten that end game raiding experience, and sure there were aspect of it that I loved, but it didn't feel like there was any weight behind accomplishments. As long as you had 24 other people that were willing in invest time into dying over and over and over, you'd eventually clear the raids.

Hardcore:

I only returned when Hardcore WoW was announced. The thought of making it to 60 or achieving a goal that you had previously thought impossible was exciting. There's no feeling like it in gaming when you are in over your head and it is legitimately a lock-in or die situation. I had about 10 deaths before things finally clicked. Most were my fault, a couple were the fault of others in my party, and 2 were disconnects. I joined a leveling guild as a paladin and had a lot of conversation with my GM on petri. She told me at level 50 you are "basically safe" because you can just buy a couple petris.

It never really sat right with me. My feeling was if I die, then I deserved to die (excluding disconnects which is irrelevant to petri usage anyways). That's the whole point of Hardcore. It is relying on your instinct, battle prowess, and wit to get out of a bad situation. It's relying on your sense of judgement to ally yourself with party members who won't roach during the first sign of danger. Having a petri on my hotbar felt like I had a big reset button on my screen. I felt that I was cheating the game.

I got to level 59 on the paladin and these conversations on petri continued to the point that my GM stated that Hardcore dungeons and raids wouldn't exist at level 60 if it wasn't for petri. So at level 59, I quit my paladin and made a Self-Found Shaman.

I loved the challenge of SF. I loved that Petri wasn't even available to me. I loved that when my life was on the line in a dungeon, it was truly lock-in or die. My first 60 in HC WOW was a SF Shaman and after I hit 60 I decided that my goal was to see how far into the game I could get with my SF tag. I was a healer and made friends with some pretty honorable tanks. And you know what happened when they realized I was SF? They went all-in with me. They had petris, but refused to use them because they didn't want to abandon me.

During level 60 dungeons, mistakes happen, you will have extra pulls and a lot of time, people will petri during battle they could have won. What is the fun in Hardcore if you remove the risk of dying?

There was one situation we got into in Dire Maul West that I thought we were dead. At one point I told my tank "Hey man, petri if you have too, save yourself". He refused. We all made it out alive and the tank said "I was just worried about you man". Surviving battles like this where the vast majority of players would petri gave me some of my best memories of WoW I've ever had. Even better than exploring the world for the first time way back in 2004.

After healing, I don't know about 60 or 70 level 60 dungeons, I was full pre-RAID BIS and decided I should join a RAIDING guild. Due to the lack of Shaman on the server, it wasn't hard to find a guild and despite it being a requirement to have petri while raiding, guilds were willing to make an exception in my case after I explained my goal of seeing how far into the game I can make it as SF. So, I ended up clearing both Onyxia and Molten Core with my SF tag active. Something I'm guessing not many players have done.

I died in Stratholme just a few days later. One of the main tanks of the guild asked me to heal an undead run. I'd never grouped with the tank before outside of the raids we just completed, but he was in full MC gear and the 3 dps were reasonably well geared. This was an experienced group and by far the best geared group I've done a dungeon with, I've cleared strat with people who still had green gear and less experience so I had no worries. Well, after the second boss the tank pulls and extra group. Having been in this situation before with people who were geared way worse, my thinking was "alright, lets lock in", but then I hear the tank yell "petri petri" and immediately petris and alt+f4. The rest of the group either petris or runs out. All the mobs lock onto me because healing aggro, and I'm taken down.

I didn't blame the tank. Throughout my entire playthrough, I figured party members of mine petri'ing out is what would kill me. It was just disappointing, because double pulls were situations I've faced hundreds of times before and yeah they are tough and scary, but if you lock in, you can handle them. It was disappointing that the best geared group I ever ran with, used an immersive breaking game mechanism to escape danger. It made me ask "Were these guys legitimately good, or did they dip out at any sign of danger?"

Circling back to Immersion and Petri:

And that's the part that makes me feel that petri ruins the game and the spirit of a HC challenge.

Earlier I spoke on the player having to use their imagination to meet the game half way to create a story of a warrior overcoming challenges. But there's no accounting for being completely surrounded by enemies, dead to rights, then just disappearing from existence to arrive safely back to your hearth. Imagine seeing this in a movie, or reading this in a book, where hero completely surrounded by enemies with no possible way to escape, then in a blink of an eye, he is just safely back in his own house....then imagine this happens 10 more times in the story. Would you keep watching/reading? Or would you say "this is dumb, there's no stacks in this story, any danger and the hero just blinks out of existence". I think you know the answer to that.

I'm sure people would argue "a hearthstone blinks you out of existence" and this is also where the game sacrifices immersion for player convenience. There's a reason it has a 10 second cast time. I believe its the assumption that if nothing has hit you within 10 seconds, odds are, you are in a position that you could have escaped by running anyways, basically the hero finding a place to hide or the ole jumping into the river to escape enemies. For the game to make you walk out of every dungeon would be a major time wasting experience. It's similar to a "quick travel" function, something that most games don't allow you to do if you are actively engaged in combat.

So in terms of imagination of crafting this story with the game. There's no accounting for petri alt+f4 (or petri and leave group - countdown timer) just blinking you to safety, literally at any moment you want. You pull 1 extra mob? Alright, blink out of existence. When I think of a Hardcore challenge, this feels *wrong*. Lets just hit the reset button and remove the stakes and turn a Hardcore challenge into softcore.

Did that tank decked out in MC gear earn it? Or did he petri at any sign of danger leaving the rest of his group to fend from themselves? I don't know. But I do know had it been one of my ride or die tanks (who had worse gear), we likely would have survived.

As for the quotes I made to start this post:

"Then just don't use them" - I don't. But other people using them directly led to my death.

"Don't tell me how to play the game" - I'm not. It's a game, play however you want. I'm just saying that my personal belief that if you use petri, you are not truly playing hardcore. You gave yourself a reset button.

"anyone against petris hasn't raided in Hardcore" - well, I did make it raiding and clear the first 2 40 man raids without ever using a petri. I do have more to say here. I think the spirit of Hardcore is all about "how far you can get with 1 life" not "how can we game the system to clear all content with just 1 life". Petri Alt+f4 (or petri countdown timer) gives you that cheat code. I'd love to see a server that either nerfs petri to 20 seconds with a forbearance timer after, or a pause the countdown timer while petri is active. It's be awesome to see how far people could get under those rules.

Anyways. I doubt many people will read this. I know its long, and from the title alone, I know it will be downvoted immediately. But I also know there are a few of you out there like me. That appreciate what it means to play Hardcore without petri.

edit: grammar correction.

veterans opinion what is easier to exp and what is more needed for inst ?
thank you for your help.

Certainly a few “oh no” moments, but this is a relaxed game for me before I go to bed, not a stressful one. If I die, I just quit for a few weeks/months. Only exception for me is dungeons where I don’t want to screw over other players. The highest I’ve made it so far is level 41. Am I alone in doing this?

I haven't got a lv 60 yet - but already when I tried logging into classic server it now seems like easy mode.

Of course you're gonna get to 60 and get good gear if you can die over and over again - almost like it doesn't count.

Curious to here your thoughts or are you able to play both?

So I quit a while back after “completing” HC on the Horde side. I’m a way bigger fan of Alliance, but started up on Horde way back because it had a vastly bigger player count.

I’ve since seen that Alliance is now the majority. This is great! And makes me want to restart.

The only issue is that my treasure trove is on Horde, and I would like to be able to dip into that while playing to make things go quicker.

Is it possible to transfer the gold?

I know the booty bay auction house is a thing, but I’m pretty sure I can’t buy my own auction. Or maybe I’m wrong about that?

Anyone with any experience doing this?

On Doomhowl, the legend of Vixon lives on. His infamy is known far and wide. It seems like the “Looking for group” chat rings his name almost every day and my guild even spoke about his unsavory history in HC. Known for his terrible behavior and “douche baggery,” Vixon has quite a reputation. Personally, Ive witnessed him in SW trolling a young toon and I recently heard he died at level 60…

Can we all gather around the fire and continue the legend?

Who is Vixon?

Feeling so guilty right now.

I was invited to join SM Lib and Arms. I'm level 39 warrior so I would have preferred to do Arms Cath, but looking at the LFG it didn't look like I could put together a cathedral group. So I said yes.

We had a 34 priest healer, 38 hunter, 36 rogue, and another 36 warior. We strolled through library easily. Group wasn't super disciplined, wasnt following the kill order, but we were strong enough it didnt really matter.

We started the armory off slowly. I've been watching tons of tanking videos, and had very successfully tanked all of my previous dungeons, including armory. But I was feeling rushed for some reason. I was feeling pressure to go fast, preserve rage and keep the pace. My health had not fallen below 50% and healer mana had not fallen below 60%. We were good to go.

I went downstairs fron the courtyard to pick up the two mobs at the base. I pulled them and was pulling them up when I saw the comms from the priest 'I pulled'. I let him know I was coming up with two, but when the rogue opened on the two, he body pulled two more. We brought up four, and they had pulled more in the scramble. We are against nine now. We were close to the door so we could have ran immediately, but everyone popped cooldowns and went to it. It wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. In the chaos I couldn't find the healer, I didn't even really think to. I just started to pull mobs together and spread some taunts and sunders. I didn't even think to use challanging shout. I've never had to use it before...

He died because of me. My healer died. I am the tank. I am the leader. And I let him down. I was always worried I was going to die tanking. This is so much worse.

A lesson for all tanks. Always play it safe. Tell your DPS to focus in order. Don't let the pressure rush you. You are the leader. Take charge. You are responsible.

Hi All,

I'm new to this HC stuff. I really like interacting with people while questing. Do you recommend Doomhowl or Skull Rock? Thank you <3

I’m about to roll my first HC toon! I’m on EST time in the U.S. and am not sure where to start. Is Doomhowl basically the only option for Anniversary (as opposed to the older original Classic realms)?

Also, are there any guilds that are especially newbie-friendly? I have very limited experience in vanilla, so I’m probably clueless about most “death traps” and really don’t want to be a liability in group content. But I’d love to grow into playing with others in HC. I know vanilla is 110% “solved”, but I’m wondering if there’s a guild out there for people like me? 🤷‍♀️

This community sounds so amazing, I can’t wait to give it a try! Let’s gooo!!! :)

Had a lock die on me in Mara because of the threat drop on princess after I got feared. Feel kinda shitty about it although I guess we all knew the risk. I did say delay dps for a bit but he didn’t really.

Anyone can tell me a sure way of killing princess and having 0 casualties 100% of the time?

Any advice appreciated, thanks.

Literally no addons at all and no wowhead or online guides etc. I dabbled a bit in hardcore but I just realised this might be a really cool and different wow experience. Like it would be fun to utilize all the knowledge you currently have but also really fun to work out all the stuff you dont know yourself. It would probably open up a whole new experience. Does anyone do this or is there some community for this?

It’s like this every night. It drives me nuts. It’s all the dumbest takes you’ve ever seen. Please tell me is horde better?

Follow up question to my earlier post. I’m standing in Elwynn Forest, level 1, and wondering if there are any addons particularly useful in HC besides Deathlog that I ought to consider before I start kicking ass, taking names, and dying in the first kobold mines quest? 😂✌️