With the launch of Official Hardcore Servers on Classic Era, I think it’s time to cover what’s different on these Official Hardcore Servers, compared to the version of Hardcore we have been playing in the past with the addon.

So, here, I will cover the major differences between the addon and the official hardcore servers, as they do not follow the same rules and are actually very different from one another.

Grouping

Let’s start with Solo / Duo / Leveling in a Group.

With the Hardcore addon, if you wanted to be in a duo or a trio, you had to be online at the same time, and level together from start to finish. There were several rules in place such as you’re not allowed to be in different zones, basically meaning you had to duo with the same person from level 1 to level 60 and always play together.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, you are free to Solo, Duo, or Trio whenever you want. You can invite whoever you want to your group whenever you want. You could, for example, group up in a 5-man group from level 1-10 and just focus on kill-quests, then split up at level 10 and then solo the rest of the way until level 60. And if you suddenly meet someone you want to duo with for a couple of hours, you can do that as well.

Basically, you are no longer locked into being a Solo, Duo or Trio Character upon starting. Because with the Addon, if you chose to be in a Duo, you were stuck in that Duo. On the upcoming Hardcore Servers, you’re more free to pick and choose throughout your journey.

So basically, Grouping was very restricted before, but now you’re free to group up when you want to.

Dungeons

Now, let’s talk about Dungeons.

With the Hardcore Addon and the Solo Self Found Ruleset, we were only allowed to do one singular run of every dungeon until we hit level 60. This could be very annoying, as a singular mistake, and losing one person could mean you miss out on the entire dungeon. Because if you lose 1 person in, for example, Zul’Farrak or Maraudon, finishing such a high level dungeon with only 4 people can be incredibly difficult and is often a risk not even worth taking on Hardcore.

This could mean you miss out on an entire dungeon because of a mistake someone else makes. And not only that but some dungeon quests were borderline impossible to do with only one run: Like for example the Stormwind Stockades Bandanas Quest, or the Zul’Farrak Mojo Quest, basically quests where you loot mobs for an item with less than 100% drop chance, and even Wailing Caverns with the Deviate Hides, though those could be farmed on the outside.

In these cases, players would literally /roll for who got to complete their quests. And if you lost the roll, you would not be able to complete your quest, which feels kinda weird.

On top of that, you also have dungeons, like Uldaman, which heavily encourages you to do multiple runs of the dungeon in order to complete every quest, although it is technically doable in one instance-run if you time it to perfection.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, all of this annoyance is removed, as we can now do several dungeon runs while leveling, although there has been one modification in order for people not to just spam Dungeon Cleaves like they did in 2019 when Classic WoW came out.

Dungeons now have a 24 hour reset timer from level 1 to 59, meaning this timer is lifted once you hit level 60, so you can freely farm dungeons. But this means while leveling, dungeons will have a daily lockout and you can run every dungeon once per day.

One more change they have made to dungeons is that mobs inside dungeons give 50% less experience, but bosses give a lot more experience than usual.

Basically, they have taken 50% of the mob experience throughout the dungeon and put it into bosses, which is done for two main reasons: Mobs inside the dungeons do reset over time, but bosses have a 24 hour reset timer. And it also encourages people to focus on killing bosses and doing the higher dungeon rather than just AoE farming mobs inside dungeons for experience.

Trading

Next up then, the use of Mailboxes, Auction House and Trading. I’ve chosen to throw all of this into one place, as it all pretty much boils down to one thing: Trading.

Sending a mail between players is essentially trading something, you’re just doing it via mails. Same thing with the Auction House, so it’s all Trading.

On Classic Era with the Hardcore Addon, Trading was not allowed, even for things, such as Mage Food or Mage Water, or Warlock Healthstones. Basically, no trading whatsoever.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, this rule will be lifted and you are free to Trade, use the Auction House, and use the mailbox. I think this is a good thing, because you have another way to make WoW Classic Hardcore Gold.

But what I will say is, all the rules we had in place with the Hardcore Addon, made it so you were pretty much forced to play in one very specific and restrictive way.

And without being allowed to Group, Trade, send mails or use the Auction House, it is a very “Solo” experience. It is definitely more challenging, but is also a lot less social, and Blizzard have verbally stated they want to focus more on the Social Element than the Challenging Element, which I think is great.

The essence of these servers being Hardcore already is quite challenging in itself, and too challenging for most people, considering if they lose a level 60 character, a lot of people simply won’t bother going again.

Also Read: WoW Classic Hardcore: An Elwynn Forest Survival Guide

Class Abilities

There are also a couple of small changes, such as Class-Abilities, which were previously prohibited or the use of certain items.

Number one here would be the Paladin Bubble-Hearth, which was technically not allowed with the Hardcore Addon, but there were a couple of work-arounds. But on the Official Hardcore Server, there will simply be a restriction in place to where Paladins physically cannot use their Hearthstone while under the Protection Effect.

However, nothing has been stated about the Light of Elune plus Hearthstone, so there might be a big favor for the Alliance here.

With the Hardcore Addon, we were also not allowed to use the Auto-Unstuck Features in order to Teleport to Major Cities, and this restriction will not be there on Official Hardcore Servers.

For most people, this won’t really matter much. But for example, as a Night Elf, this means you can use the Auto Unstuck Feature to teleport to Ironforge instead of having to walk through Wetlands, or swim to Westfall, so it definitely has some practical uses.

Minor Changes

Now, let’s talk about some minor things that might not directly impact your gameplay, but are pretty huge changes overall.

- With the Hardcore Addon, we had an Appeal System. On the Official Hardcore Server, we will not have an Appeal System. This means if you die because of a disconnect, your run is over. But, Blizzard have done a lot of work in the back-end to atleast make it so you disconnect as little as possible from the game itself. But if you have terrible internet connection, there’s really not a lot Blizzard can do.

A lot of people have speculated that they could have added a disconnect-protection-mechanic where if you disconnect, you get a protective bubble around your character until you come back in. But believe me, that could be abused and would be just as terrible as anything else.

Imagine if we had such a system, I could just install a flip switch for my internet router next to my PC on a foot-pedal and if I’m ever close to die or in an oh-shit situation, I could just hit that switch and disconnect and get a protective bubble around my character.

- There will be a lot less griefing on the Official Hardcore Server than we had on Classic Era with the Addon. With the Addon on Classic Era, we had people stand on flightmasters with PVP enabled players naming themselves after mobs and forcing you to target them. Basically, people just forcing you into PVP combat then griefing you.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, you have to physically opt in to PVP by typing /pvp in order to get PVP flagged, so that the entire category of griefing is now disabled.

We also saw people drag elite mobs such as Teremus all the way to Stormwind and Elwynn Forest, and mobs will now have a kite-leash-cap, meaning if you try to kite a mob more than 500 yards away, it will reset. So, in this example, kiting Teremus out of Blasted Lands would end up resetting Teremus.

On the other hand, there is a new category of griefs, which Blizzard really can’t to anything about, and that is “Social Griefing” by players pretending to be your friend, joining your dungeon group or raid, then wiping the entire group.