World of Warcraft Classic is already a harder, more demanding version of modern WoW, but the entire community of players likes to make it worse.

Hardcore players in WoW Classic try to reach the maximum level without dying, an outstanding feat for an MMO released in 2004. Regular enemies hit you like a truck, resources are scarce, and finishing quests is a challenge. One misclick on an ability or one misstep off a cliff and you die. That's it. Death = Deletion."

So far, WoW Classic does not have a hardcore mode built into it. Players simply commit to deleting their characters if they die on their own. However, after many requests from the classic hardcore community for an official hardcore realm (server), Blizzard may finally make it happen. twitter user Meorawr (opens in new tab) (Solanya (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab) tweeted) found a code in the PTR (Public Test Realm) of WoW patch 10.1 that looks like a warning message to those trying to create characters in the hardcore realm.

WoW Dragonflight and WoW Classic share a lot of infrastructure behind the scenes, so the fact that this code appears in the modern version of the MMO does not rule out the retro version of the MMO WoW Classic is considerably more difficult than modern WoW, and therefore most people are not aware of the old MMO's prefer hardcore servers.

The hardcore classic community generally plays on the Bloodsail Buccaneers and Hydraxian Waterlords servers, which use add-ons that track the legitimacy of their runs. Runners can earn custom achievements and earn rankings on the Classic Hardcore Leaderboard (opens in a new tab). The rules are simple: don't die and don't let other normal players help you.

However, you can group with hardcore players and complete a pre-approved dungeon only once. With an official hardcore server, it would be much easier to find other hardcore players and there would be less chance of normal players ruining their runs.

Some classic hardcore players are concerned about the extent to which Blizzard will manage hardcore players. Said Reddit user Yejmo (opens in new tab), "I'm happy that there might be an official HC server, but at the same time I feel like I can't trust Blizzard to do it right." I'd be very sad if I died due to a flight path disconnect at [level] 40+ and had to reroll or wait 2 months for a ticket response lol, but I'll play regardless."

Unintentional deaths due to things like disconnections and glitches are a real problem, and the hardcore community at Classic will let you continue a run as long as you have proof that you died for technical reasons.

Who knows how Blizzard would deal with hardcore servers if they were to become real? It is possible that by making it official, more players will create characters purely to finish other people's runs. In theory, all players on these servers would risk dying and losing access to their characters, but that probably wouldn't stop the most dedicated griefers. It could be chaos, or it could be a reasonable alternative to doing it all with mods and an honor system.

Blizzard has made no official comment on hardcore servers, but PTR codes are usually data-mined and soon to be legitimate. A third possible specialization (open in new tab) for Dracthyr Evokers was also discovered by data miners in the PTR of patch 10.1.