World of Warcraft Classic, the 2019 relaunch of a game first released in 2004, is currently undergoing something of an explosion in popularity again, thanks to one specific addon that’s been breathing new life into the game for many.
The addon, Classic Hardcore, is something of a breed apart from usual addons. Most popular addons exist to streamline the basic game, by adding extra quality of life improvements that make the game easier. For instance, popular addons will refine the auction house, making it easier to post large numbers of items, or will track resource nodes on the map, saving you time while out farming for professions. No, Classic Hardcore is all about making the game harder instead.
Classic Hardcore has a lot of rules, but the key rule is also one of the most forbidding: If you die, your character is deleted. That’s it, one life is all you get until you hit max level and immortality beckons. Other rules revolve around limiting help from other players, and include not using the auction house, or trading with other players.
You might think that adding extra rules to a game would reduce the amount of fun you can have, but a big part of the belief system for those who prefer WoW Classic is the idea that "retail" WoW, i.e., the most recent expansions, have become too easy. On the flip side, it’s easy for even the recent relaunches of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King to become too easy, too quickly, simply because people have played them before. Classic Hardcore gives returning players a fresh new challenge in a world they know and love.
Blizzard has clearly noticed the popularity of Classic Hardcore, as there have been signs it’s looking to implement an official version of the mode. According to Twitter user @Solanya_ (and discovered by @Meorawr), the version 10.1 of World of Warcraft in the public test realm includes code for a small popup box for "hardcore realms", indicating that Blizzard may be looking to include official hardcore realms in WoW Classic.
It would certainly be one way for Blizzard to freshen the WoW Classic experience. With as successful as WoW Classic has been, there’s a sense Blizzard is starting to run out of room where relaunching old expansions is concerned. Now Wrath of the Lich King has been launched, the next expansion is Cataclysm — the expansion notorious for completely rearranging the World of Warcraft world, and removing the ability for players to easily revisit the old version of WoW they love.