It's only "hardcore" if you don't like earning everything.
No, not really. It's unforgiving compared to modern MMOs, for sure, but it's not as punishing as some older ones. I kind of like it as a medium-core MMO.
I'm talking mainly in terms of death penalty. Like, in Everquest when you die you lose experience and drop all of your items on your body (on the Rallos Zek server if you died in PVP, the player who killed you could loot an item off you). You then have to either run back naked to where you died, which might involve getting a Rogue friend to sneak in and drag your corpse somewhere safe, and/or get a Cleric to resurrect you (which is vastly preferable since their rezzes would restore some of the experience loss, up to 98% if you could get a high level rez!).
Or going back to like Nexus TK, when you died you'd lose a hefty chunk of experience and all of your Break On Death items, uh, break. And then they're just gone and you have to go buy them, farm them, or win them again.
All that said I think WoW hits a good sweet spot where you're not an unstoppable god blowing through the content, but also dying isn't such a gut-punch. Don't get me wrong, being legitimately afraid to die makes dungeon diving actually seem dangerous and adds to the immersion, but I also don't mind losing them for convenience's sake.
That said I'm not sure why WoW got the reputation of being the casual MMO, considering a much more casual MMO also had a big launch a few months prior: City of Heroes. I just played that on a private server for a bit and, XP debt aside, it feels much more approachable and casual to someone who's completely unfamiliar with MMOs or RPGs. I guess just because WoW ended up being that much more popular.
after playing a game like FFXI back in the day before wow, this game does feel more casual. I honestly feel classic wow is even a more casual friendly game than the current game. Retail is all about getting max level ASAP and grinding AP and spamming mythic + for titan forge gear the leveling and the casual content is very lackluster now, pretty much leaves most casual players to mount farm or transmog farm.
FFXI was ridiculous, there were quests but they werent really your main means of leveling. You basically solo grinded mobs to level 10 and then had to group with 5 others to efficiently level all the way to max. Classic leveling feels very steady and constantly rewarding, if you just play an hour a day you can get something back from the game.
There is no real heavy grind required for reaching endgame goals in wow and wow classic. So, I would consider wow classic as a casual MMO.
Getting PvP r13/14 is maybe a hardcore thing, but the game does not turn by that into a hardcore MMO for me.
"Hardcore" in the context of games usually means inconvenient or very time consuming. Older games used to be more hardcore because they lacked content, so the existing content had to be stretched. When platformers only had 10 stages to play through these stages had to be fricking hard, otherwise the game would be over 30 minutes in. If the same type of game has 150 stages they dont have to be difficult; it will take you long enough either way.
MMOs had the same problem. Before WoW endgame content didnt exist. People grinded the shit out of the games (including very annoying setbacks like the ones mentioned in this thread) and thats it. WoW didnt need to be as hardcore because it had stuff to do at max level. With endgame (or rather say additional) content continously expanding the still existing hardcorey aspects became unnecessary and got removed over time.
Would you consider soccer a hardcore sport?
i feel like this questions really boils down to what level you play at and what your intentions are. My plan is to play 10 hours a week and i have no specific goals, i wouldnt call that very hardcore. However for someone who is going to push world first and always stay ahead of the pack and play 50-60 hours a week then yeah sure it's hardcore!
And this is what makes warcraft great. You can choose yourself what world of warcraft is to you.
I'm gonna say no.
The only hardcore aspect of the game is the R14 grind because that requires you to play for X amount of hours per day over a period of 3 or 4 months.
Everything else can be done at your own pace.
Even Naxxramas can eventually be cleared by a semi-casual player who sets aside a couple of nights a week to raid and maybe an extra couple of hours to farm consumables.
I'd say it depends on what you're doing
You can play any games casual or hardcore depending on your goals
Depends on your definition of casual. I find it very casual as its just a farming simulator. Compared to other MMO's the actual content isn't challenging its just grindy. How much time you put in is how much you get in return (Sometimes. Wiping on vael 5 times in one night because the druid keeps pre-hotting the MT tends to hurt).
Idk. After playing games like Old school runescape for many many years ontop of WoW since my early childhood its all casual to me.
I always loved it because it's casual. It was looking at the MMORPG that preeceded it (EQ, Ultima, DAOC) and it's still is. Don't get me wrong: it's more punishing and challanging than modern WoW (at least in every aspect except raiding/mythic dungeons), but you can always play at your pace (except R14 grind, but that's something that will be done by a very small percentage of players). You can ALWAYS take your time doing anything you want without losing anything, since there's basically no artifical time-gating involved anywhere.
Definitely hardcore by all of today's standards. Not back then though.
The most brutal form of WoW wasn't as bad as FF11, Everquest, etc. I remember busting my ass to finally open up the 'Samurai' class in FF11. It was a long, brutal grind where any death means you LOSE experience. A big chunk too.
Spent so long finally unlocking Samurai as a class and then the first fight I get in, I die. I lose so much xp that I drop my level. When my level dropped, I lost my class as well because it had to be a minimum level.
You know how fucking soul crushing it is to do so bad at an MMO you can't even be the same class anymore!?
Definitely hardcore by all of today's standards. Not back then though.
Not sure why I keep seeing this. Being a world-first hardcore raider will take WAY more time in retail than in Classic.
Being a hardcore progressive raider (playing in more reasonable circumstances) will still take WAY less time to grind and farm in a given week in Classic than it will in current retail.
Being casual is the same in both, you're just casual. No expectations. Run around in circles and look at stuff.
Retail is far more "hardcore" and requires far more time and effort to play optimally than vanilla does. I hate retail. But this is just reality. Retail takes WAY more time/energy and skill to min/max and optimize in a given raid tier than Classic will. If the argument is how hardcore Classic WAS back in retail vanilla, it is STILL casual by the MMO's standards back then; it was designed for the casual market.
Definitely hardcore by all of today's standards. Not back then though.
Not sure why I keep seeing this. Being a world-first hardcore raider will take WAY more time in retail than in Classic.
Being a hardcore progressive raider (playing in more reasonable circumstances) will still take WAY less time to grind and farm in a given week in Classic than it will in current retail.
Being casual is the same in both, you're just casual. No expectations. Run around in circles and look at stuff.
Retail is far more "hardcore" and requires far more time and effort to play optimally than vanilla does. I hate retail. But this is just reality. Retail takes WAY more time/energy and skill to min/max and optimize in a given raid tier than Classic will. If the argument is how hardcore Classic WAS back in retail vanilla, it is STILL casual by the MMO's standards back then; it was designed for the casual market.
I think that when people are judging the games and saying that retail WoW isn't hardcore, we're meaning the entire game. Not just the raid scene. I agree with you that raids and their difficulty are EASILY much harder now, but an MMO is more than its endgame content.
When the word 'hardcore' is used, in this context at least, i'm thinking hardcore as in it's very unforgiving. You really need to know what you're doing to excel, to level faster, etc. The consequences of failure were greater imo. Retail doesn't have many consequences for much of anything outside of raiding imo.
I think that when people are judging the games and saying that retail WoW isn't hardcore, we're meaning the entire game. Not just the raid scene. I agree with you that raids and their difficulty are EASILY much harder now, but an MMO is more than its endgame content.
Right, but when we remove the casual aspect of the game and focus on the game that rewards effort or time, Retail takes more effort and takes more time longterm. Period. Can you buy a max level toon? Sure. But you can also dungeon grind to 60 in Classic in 3-4 days. The difference is that you can raid for 1-2 hours per week in Classic on progression. This is NOT the case on retail. Not even close. Retail requires more effort and more time.
When the word 'hardcore' is used, in this context at least, i'm thinking hardcore as in it's very unforgiving. You really need to know what you're doing to excel, to level faster, etc. The consequences of failure were greater imo. Retail doesn't have many consequences for much of anything outside of raiding imo.
The bar for vanilla is set really... really... really low. I agree that you may face more adversity early on in vanilla, but I would not agree that this makes the game more hardcore overall. If we look at vanilla vs retail in its entirety, vanilla can be beaten with time. That is the only requirement. In vanilla we think of EVERYTHING in terms of time, because this is the MOST valuable resource. Gold per hour. Xp per hour. Honor per hour. Speed running old raids to save time. Everything is time vs reward. However in retail, things are gated behind skill. Retail is definitively more hardcore overall as you can not simply beat everything with time. I am not pro retail, but I think that sometimes forums like this become a bit of an echo chamber with people who probably havent raided competitively in the past few retail expansions. Having raided in every expansion from vanilla-legion, and having played BFA, retail is more hardcore. This is factual.
If we are arguing about difficulty, this becomes a bit more nuanced because difficulty can be presented in a variety of different ways... However, from a hardcore aspect and addressing the TIME and EFFORT that it takes to succeed at the top end or in any progressive environment, Classic is the equivalent of a mini game to what people are doing in Retail to stay competitive, and will likely be treated as a mini game for many hardcore retail players.
tldr; a very unpopular opinion that is based on truth. dont read it.
This is very tricky to argument but I will try my best.
IF you play WoW BfA casually, you will go through the game like a breeze, the game is setup for you to feel the storytelling and really good dynamics on leveling faster.
IF you play WoW Classic casually, you will feel the grind, the long quests and running across the maps, the game wasn't made at the time for questing up to 60, a route wasn't designed yet. Getting a raid and time to do it is very slow, and getting items can be a lot of work.
IF you play WoW BfA Hardcore, you will find a lot of shores and things you need to do every day, because high tier raiding is not for everyone, you need to invest the time, tactics, and have good mechanics.
IF you play WoW Classic Hardcore, you will be 60 in a few weeks and have everything cleared, just looking to max some things here and there, Classic is a small world for hardcore players in 2019, it was stripped down in information and hardcore players know it all.
Trying to add a tag into a game divided into 2 completly different games isn't going to work, because there are different types of players, and the game followed different paths from when it was created.
Example:
For me, the game is hardcore, I play it casually so it takes time to do every damn thing and I love it.
For someone with time or very good planning and discipline, welp, he may already have cleared it all and just been min/maxing these days..
So, hardcore or not, it all depends on the player itself.