ORIGINAL: diablo1
that "hardcore" really means: la masochistic liking of complexity/difficulty?
That's me when playing role playing or adventure or MMO's in a nutshell. I want the world to feel like the real thing. I want to be afraid of losing my life or my toys. It's a rush when things are going bad in worlds like this. EQ even had an even harder hardcore server for awhile. If you died you went back to level 1 no matter what level you were. I loved this kind of play.
Too many of these MMO's MMORPG's just allow you to rush to maximum level now and there's really no penalties for dying. DAOC and SWG has or have deterioating items now. I think that's GREAT in these worlds. This keeps everyone adventuring for more stuff and nobody remains king of the hill or "I got the best stuff cause I rule blah blah lol". Also with things growing old or breaking this keeps those that enjoy crafting busy and doing what they enjoy continously. SWG's was like this but I've found it's not like it used to be.
See the carebears whine about they can't keep up and enough of them whined the developers and companies listened. Now the carebears run around with all the great stuff and they are happy but the hardcore players aren't. We get pushed aside in nearly every game out there now. I don't want some snotty nosed 8 year old playing next to me with stuff he doesn't deserve but because the developers made the game so easy he can have all of it by just whinning to guildies or even worse whinning to daddy to buy him gold off ebay so he can buy it. I'm a firm believer in NO DROP NO TRADE SUPREME items. You have to earn these items yourself you can't buy them or trade for them. Only the hardcore will ever get to play with these puppies. [:)]
Yeah, this started with WoW. WoW was designed with the casual player in mind (at least until you got to a certain level and the raiding grind started). Because of this and a few other reasons (it actually worked aside from the initial lag issues, it worked on older systems etc) the game was wildly popular even with casual players who would have never played any of the previous MMO's becasue they required a little commitment and there actually were consequences to playing like a fool.
Since then, aside from a few exceptions,....every MMO tries to copy WoW in some way or another hoping to imitate some of their success by imitating what made the game so popular................all the while claiming they are not trying to compete with or become a WoW killer. (mainly so they dont have to admit failure when their game inevitably falls far short of the numbers WoW has). So now we have all these MMO's where you can play with half your brain tied behind your back and still 'win' and continue to level nearly as fast as someone who plays 'smart'.
Occasionally a small developer will try to do something new,....but almost always their budget limitations show up and its released far too early, which almost always ends very badly.
