Hardcore Realm System Suggestion

[Deleted]

Altered Realm System (NOT HARDCORE)

First off, I like the content of current wow, and especially how Legion is looking. However, some don't agree with the systems in place. With the recent demand for legacy servers I have been taking a look at why players want this kind of content. I have come to the realization that changing today’s wow to appeal to these players is impossible as the underlying systems these days are so very different. That is why it is, and it cannot be changed. My solution, that does not require legacy servers and is quite easy to do? Hardcore realms. Here I will list the changes made to this server. This would be a new (AND SEPARATE) server with these rule sets, which are all easily implemented and should not impact normal servers.

Disclaimer: This system is designed not to require a lot of development time, and in no way shape or form should impact normal realms. The purpose is simply to create a different realm with new rule sets to accommodate peoples' desires.

Mob changes

• Increase mob HP, Damage and Aggro range

Design Comment: It’s quite obvious that mobs at the moment pose no threat while leveling whatsoever, even when decked out in completely normal gear. I would increase the HP, damage and aggro range of mobs. This would make players feel as though they could not mass pull, and may encourage players to stay on paths rather than just running straight through the zone.

Heirlooms

• Disable all heirlooms

Design Comment: Obviously having heirlooms on a hardcore realm wouldn’t make sense, and in order to keep items from dungeons relevant and rewarding as well as world content challenging, these need to be removed.

Experience Gain

• Increase XP requirement so much as to not outlevel zones

Design Comment: As well as fitting the ‘hardcore’ theme of the realm, it allows players to finish the stories of zones without feeling as though they are not reaping benefit from playing there.

Dungeon Changes

• Insanely increase difficulty of dungeon mobs and bosses

Design Comment: Dungeons should be a lot more challenging than open world requiring time and effort to complete.

Raid Difficulties (Please read design comment)

• Disable all raid difficulties apart from mythic

Design Comment: There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a boss for the first time, this is diminished by heroic/normal week before mythic. Mythic bosses feel like copies of heroic bosses with a few more mechanics. This way the bosses only exist in one form, their most challenging. But how do you get the gear to get here do you ask? Let me explain… In Legion Mythic+ dungeons, professions and world quests yield gear up to heroic raid level. This way the progression path allows you to get enough gear to tackle early mythic bosses, which then give you more gear to push to later mythic bosses. Obviously you won’t have set bonuses making the mythic bosses more challenging, but hey, it’s supposed to be a ‘hardcore’ realm. I will make a post about Mythic+ and world quests below to verify the assumption being made here.

Mythic+ and World Quests

• Make it is so high level Mythic+ and hard world quests give sufficient heroic raid level gear

Design Comment: Reasoning explained above, and as far as I know normal realms will have this anyway. This allows us to make the aforementioned raid difficulty change.

LFG/LFM

• Disable the LFG/LFM system

Design Comment: It’s a ‘hardcore’ realm and this change is rather self-explanatory.

Cross Realm

• Disable cross realm capability

Design Comment: In order to build a sense of community, and to accommodate for the fact that this realm has different rule sets than normal ones, obviously interaction between this realm and others shouldn’t really be a thing.

Progression of Tiers (Read design comment)

• When a new tier launches, nerf previous tiers slightly
• Do not add too many catch up mechanics

Design Comment: One concern that has been brought up is that only mythic raiding would be way too difficult for the vast majority of the playerbase. This is true, and without added practise on lower difficulties and set bonuses/trinkets this could mean that progression will take longer than usual. Having a longer raid tier can be good, and following tiers can be still added on time. How? Well in this system the previous tier would not be nullified by releasing the next. Slightly nerf previous content to create a stepping stone progression akin to that in TBC. That way, by the end of the expansion all tiers of raiding will be relevant, and the first one will be easy and accessible enough for a larger portion of the playerbase to do it. However, this way the raid will still feel epic and will only have one difficulty. There will be so much raid content to do and progress through for so many people, that this could alleviate issues of the end of expansion content drought, as all tiers of raiding will still be relevant for the player base. Seeing as the last tier usually lasts a long time too, a lot more people may be able to adventure through the tiers to see the final boss. If you add too many catch up mechanics this won’t work either, but seeing as this is a different realm it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Edit: Added progression of tiers

[Lochton]

This would in my book fall under what I would believe to not be that useful, even a Legacy realm would be more useful than this.

[Deleted]

This would in my book fall under what I would believe to not be that useful, even a Legacy realm would be more useful than this.

How come? I know I would play this, and many others would too. It's easier to implement than legacy and it keeps with Blizzard's philosophy of moving forward.

[Torgent]

Oh look, OP is showing why he isn't a game designer lol. What you're proposing would take a lot of resources and fail. This would be almost fun for about 30 minutes.

[Lochton]

How come? I know I would play this, and many others would too. It's easier to implement than legacy and it keeps with Blizzard's philosophy of moving forward.

But, it isn't moving forward if you go in to remove settings that Blizzard had to implement to make the zones feel more active, or less queues for the dungeons/raids. The general idea of a 'Hardcore' realm defeats what you wrote in the raid difficulty 'design comment'.

[Lakrin]

I think it's interesting, and I think a decent number of people would try something like this, but I can't see a mass amount of players using it and sticking by it for long enough to merit Blizzard putting in any amount of resources toward it.

[FlemmMinis]

Well... at least it is no legacy realm Thread...
The idea is not new... but I think there would be even less reciepients than on legacy servers. I personally know no one who did the ironman challenge.

[Xaviaton]

This seems like a very enjoyable concept to me. I don't really do mythic raiding so for people like me, perhaps two tiers (Hc and Mythic level) would be great. I'd imagine a lot of guilds requiring you to be part on a "normal server" guild to get used to tactics on lower difficulties as well. That being said, I think I would be happy to stay out of raiding if HC dungeons provided me with enough challenge. On the disabling of LFG/LFR, I agree but what are your thoughts on the group finder tool?

[Flurryfang]

Hardcore Realm System

First off, I like the content of current wow, and especially how Legion is looking. However, some don't agree with the systems in place. With the recent demand for legacy servers I have been taking a look at why players want this kind of content. I have come to the realization that changing today’s wow to appeal to these players is impossible as the underlying systems these days are so very different. That is why it is, and it cannot be changed. My solution, that does not require legacy servers and is quite easy to do? Hardcore realms. Here I will list the changes made to this server. This would be a new (AND SEPARATE) server with these rule sets, which are all easily implemented and should not impact normal servers.

Disclaimer: This system is designed not to require a lot of development time, and in no way shape or form should impact normal realms. The purpose is simply to create a different realm with new rule sets to accommodate peoples' desires.

Mob changes

• Increase mob HP, Damage and Aggro range

Design Comment: It’s quite obvious that mobs at the moment pose no threat while leveling whatsoever, even when decked out in completely normal gear. I would increase the HP, damage and aggro range of mobs. This would make players feel as though they could not mass pull, and may encourage players to stay on paths rather than just running straight through the zone.

Heirlooms

• Disable all heirlooms

Design Comment: Obviously having heirlooms on a hardcore realm wouldn’t make sense, and in order to keep items from dungeons relevant and rewarding as well as world content challenging, these need to be removed.

Experience Gain

• Increase XP requirement so much as to not outlevel zones

Design Comment: As well as fitting the ‘hardcore’ theme of the realm, it allows players to finish the stories of zones without feeling as though they are not reaping benefit from playing there.

Dungeon Changes

• Insanely increase difficulty of dungeon mobs and bosses

Design Comment: Dungeons should be a lot more challenging than open world requiring time and effort to complete.

Raid Difficulties (Please read design comment)

• Disable all raid difficulties apart from mythic

Design Comment: There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a boss for the first time, this is diminished by heroic/normal week before mythic. Mythic bosses feel like copies of heroic bosses with a few more mechanics. This way the bosses only exist in one form, their most challenging. But how do you get the gear to get here do you ask? Let me explain… In Legion Mythic+ dungeons, professions and world quests yield gear up to heroic raid level. This way the progression path allows you to get enough gear to tackle early mythic bosses, which then give you more gear to push to later mythic bosses. Obviously you won’t have set bonuses making the mythic bosses more challenging, but hey, it’s supposed to be a ‘hardcore’ realm. I will make a post about Mythic+ and world quests below to verify the assumption being made here.

Mythic+ and World Quests

• Make it is so high level Mythic+ and hard world quests give sufficient heroic raid level gear

Design Comment: Reasoning explained above, and as far as I know normal realms will have this anyway. This allows us to make the aforementioned raid difficulty change.

LFG/LFM

• Disable the LFG/LFM system

Design Comment: It’s a ‘hardcore’ realm and this change is rather self-explanatory.

Cross Realm

• Disable cross realm capability

Design Comment: In order to build a sense of community, and to accommodate for the fact that this realm has different rule sets than normal ones, obviously interaction between this realm and others shouldn’t really be a thing.

No..... And no.... One little thing though... No!

Why? Because you don't need a server to implement good changes. Mob changes is something, that needs to be done on every server, so why keep it to a hardcore server. Heirlooms is something, that again, needs to be changed in general. There is nothing wrong with good gear, but its really just way to powerfull. Another change which you don't need a dedicated server to implement. Experience requirement increase is, again, needed anyway on all servers.
Insanely increasing difficulty on dungeons, will just stop people from doing dungeons. There is little reward in dungeons, and if you make them hard, people are not going to use time on something which improves them very little. They would have rework the entire dungeon experience, not something that can just be done on a new server.

Only having mythic is insane. The post-Cata WoW simply can't handle it. Rerolling MoP and WoD raids into that system, would make raids have a weird pase. I feel this is just a push for pre-ICC raiding, which i do applaud, but it is again, something that does not need to be server unique. Mythic+ and world quests giving "raid" loot? Why not just reduce the amount of dmg and health the bosses have, and let us go into "Mythic" with blue gear? You are just gonna make it so that people will have to farm for months to get into any form of raiding with that system.

Finally diabling the systems would be a thing, that you could use a specific server for.... But i doubt many people will use the server just for that. Would be fun if blizzard made a none LFG/LFM server, which had no crossed realm, just to see how people would react without them. This is the only thing, which i think is interesting about your idea.

[Deleted]

Frankly, dividing the game into even more difficulties is the last thing it needs right now. These changes should be applied to live servers.

There needs to be ONE difficulty for raids, this one is a biggie. Raiding has become too much of a numbers game and less of an experience. You can't say "Woah, my guild has just killed this badass boss! Finally!" anymore because you've killed this boss in LFR already. Yes, it's still the same boss even when he drops the same looking gear with higher numbers and has an additional mechanic or two. A meaningful and streamlined raid progression is also what prevents a content drought. It provides all kinds of people with incentive to get better gear and to polish the knowledge of their class. The presence of content that you can't tackle just yet makes the world/game feel bigger, too. It's basically a win-win situation.

I agree with all of your leveling/world suggestions. They're what WoW desperately needs. As for disabling Cross-Realm, I don't think it would do any good. There are so many dead realms out there and they would suffer like hell. I believe that LFG/LFM should stay as well, only for 5-man dungeons, though. They also need to be considerably harder, right now 5-mans are a bad joke, apart from mythic dungeons which really tingle my back-in-the-day feelings. So, normal dungeons should have the difficulty of current heroic dungeons and heroic dungeons should be as hard as current mythic dungeons.

[looorg]

If you want to be hardcore why not just have Perma-death. Die and the toon gets deleted and you start over again. Somehow I don't think that would be very popular and there would probably be massive amounts of griefing.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Hardcore Realm System

First off, I like the content of current wow, and especially how Legion is looking. However, some don't agree with the systems in place. With the recent demand for legacy servers I have been taking a look at why players want this kind of content. I have come to the realization that changing today’s wow to appeal to these players is impossible as the underlying systems these days are so very different. That is why it is, and it cannot be changed. My solution, that does not require legacy servers and is quite easy to do? Hardcore realms. Here I will list the changes made to this server. This would be a new (AND SEPARATE) server with these rule sets, which are all easily implemented and should not impact normal servers.

Disclaimer: This system is designed not to require a lot of development time, and in no way shape or form should impact normal realms. The purpose is simply to create a different realm with new rule sets to accommodate peoples' desires.

Mob changes

• Increase mob HP, Damage and Aggro range

Design Comment: It’s quite obvious that mobs at the moment pose no threat while leveling whatsoever, even when decked out in completely normal gear. I would increase the HP, damage and aggro range of mobs. This would make players feel as though they could not mass pull, and may encourage players to stay on paths rather than just running straight through the zone.

Heirlooms

• Disable all heirlooms

Design Comment: Obviously having heirlooms on a hardcore realm wouldn’t make sense, and in order to keep items from dungeons relevant and rewarding as well as world content challenging, these need to be removed.

Experience Gain

• Increase XP requirement so much as to not outlevel zones

Design Comment: As well as fitting the ‘hardcore’ theme of the realm, it allows players to finish the stories of zones without feeling as though they are not reaping benefit from playing there.

Dungeon Changes

• Insanely increase difficulty of dungeon mobs and bosses

Design Comment: Dungeons should be a lot more challenging than open world requiring time and effort to complete.

Raid Difficulties (Please read design comment)

• Disable all raid difficulties apart from mythic

Design Comment: There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a boss for the first time, this is diminished by heroic/normal week before mythic. Mythic bosses feel like copies of heroic bosses with a few more mechanics. This way the bosses only exist in one form, their most challenging. But how do you get the gear to get here do you ask? Let me explain… In Legion Mythic+ dungeons, professions and world quests yield gear up to heroic raid level. This way the progression path allows you to get enough gear to tackle early mythic bosses, which then give you more gear to push to later mythic bosses. Obviously you won’t have set bonuses making the mythic bosses more challenging, but hey, it’s supposed to be a ‘hardcore’ realm. I will make a post about Mythic+ and world quests below to verify the assumption being made here.

Mythic+ and World Quests

• Make it is so high level Mythic+ and hard world quests give sufficient heroic raid level gear

Design Comment: Reasoning explained above, and as far as I know normal realms will have this anyway. This allows us to make the aforementioned raid difficulty change.

LFG/LFM

• Disable the LFG/LFM system

Design Comment: It’s a ‘hardcore’ realm and this change is rather self-explanatory.

Cross Realm

• Disable cross realm capability

Design Comment: In order to build a sense of community, and to accommodate for the fact that this realm has different rule sets than normal ones, obviously interaction between this realm and others shouldn’t really be a thing.

I'll set the other flaws aside for now. This's how I'm understanding it from a wod perspective:
- Level slower
- Skip leveling dungeons because they wouldn't be worth it
- Gear primarily through crafting, garrisons and baleful things
- Endgame is mythic dungeons and hoping for warforged drops, because that's the only way to hope for gear to not get destroyed in raids

[clevin]

This, more than anything, is why I think Blizzard avoids legacy servers. Once they show willingness to fragment the users across different server types people will want all kinds of different environments. Flying enabled. No flying at all. Hardcore. Vanilla, TBC, LK etc. Old world pre-cate. etc etc.

It's MUCH easier for them to say "We provide one game, it evolves. WE do let you choose between PVP and PVE and have some RP realms with each of those flavors but that's it."

[Deleted]

I've been advocating the same idea for a long time. Multiple difficulties is good, multiple difficulties to the same content in an MMORPG is a disaster. I see two ways of fixing this: 1) create different content for the different difficulties, or 2) have different realms with different difficulties.

[Xaviaton]

Hey..you claim "many" are like you, you should have no problem finding them.

To me this is kind of like RPing. It's a lot easier to find RPers on a RP server than any other server. That doesn't mean it's impossible, just that a designated server helps a small community (It is small compared to the amount of players altogether) find like minded people.

[Deleted]

What I don't get is: Some things are already in the game, just use some restraint

Don't like heirlooms? Don't use them. Don't like LFR / LFD: Spam for groups in /1. Hey..you claim "many" are like you, you should have no problem finding them. And while you are at it, be hardcore and walk everywhere until max level.

If that worked, we wouldn't have threads like this. But humans don't work like that. "Using restraint" is not fun. By your logic they could just put all max ilvl gear and all achievements on a vendor for free, and people could either take them or earn them in game. Those that just want cool gear could get the gear without having to "waste time" raiding, while those that want to earn their gear can "just use some restraint".

[Deleted]

Oh look, OP is showing why he isn't a game designer lol. What you're proposing would take a lot of resources and fail. This would be almost fun for about 30 minutes.

Fun is subjective, just because you may not enjoy does not mean others wouldn't.

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But, it isn't moving forward if you go in to remove settings that Blizzard had to implement to make the zones feel more active, or less queues for the dungeons/raids. The general idea of a 'Hardcore' realm defeats what you wrote in the raid difficulty 'design comment'.

Blizzard had to implement them as certain realms were more low pop than others. The assumption is that with a smaller pool of realms for this system there are enough people in order for those system to be disabled.

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I think it's interesting, and I think a decent number of people would try something like this, but I can't see a mass amount of players using it and sticking by it for long enough to merit Blizzard putting in any amount of resources toward it.

Obviously I don't have any numbers to back it up, but it sure does appeal to the outcry of legacy crowd and even if it would get 10k constant players would be worth it in terms of money if only running 1-2 servers for it.

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Well... at least it is no legacy realm Thread...
The idea is not new... but I think there would be even less reciepients than on legacy servers. I personally know no one who did the ironman challenge.

Well it's not really the ironman challenge as you can die as much as you want, and since it's official forced rule sets it's a bit different. There was no incentive to purposefully gimp yourself on a normal realm and do the ironman challenge.

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No..... And no.... One little thing though... No!

Why? Because you don't need a server to implement good changes. Mob changes is something, that needs to be done on every server, so why keep it to a hardcore server. Heirlooms is something, that again, needs to be changed in general. There is nothing wrong with good gear, but its really just way to powerfull. Another change which you don't need a dedicated server to implement. Experience requirement increase is, again, needed anyway on all servers.
Insanely increasing difficulty on dungeons, will just stop people from doing dungeons. There is little reward in dungeons, and if you make them hard, people are not going to use time on something which improves them very little. They would have rework the entire dungeon experience, not something that can just be done on a new server.

Only having mythic is insane. The post-Cata WoW simply can't handle it. Rerolling MoP and WoD raids into that system, would make raids have a weird pase. I feel this is just a push for pre-ICC raiding, which i do applaud, but it is again, something that does not need to be server unique. Mythic+ and world quests giving "raid" loot? Why not just reduce the amount of dmg and health the bosses have, and let us go into "Mythic" with blue gear? You are just gonna make it so that people will have to farm for months to get into any form of raiding with that system.

Finally diabling the systems would be a thing, that you could use a specific server for.... But i doubt many people will use the server just for that. Would be fun if blizzard made a none LFG/LFM server, which had no crossed realm, just to see how people would react without them. This is the only thing, which i think is interesting about your idea.

Only having mythic is not insane, it would just make the content take long to complete. It's a hardcore realm, and that is kinda the purpose behind it? :P

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I'll set the other flaws aside for now. This's how I'm understanding it from a wod perspective:
- Level slower
- Skip leveling dungeons because they wouldn't be worth it
- Gear primarily through crafting, garrisons and baleful things
- Endgame is mythic dungeons and hoping for warforged drops, because that's the only way to hope for gear to not get destroyed in raids

This is something that should only be implemented and be kept in mind with Legion.

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What I don't get is: Some things are already in the game, just use some restraint

Don't like heirlooms? Don't use them. Don't like LFR / LFD: Spam for groups in /1. Hey..you claim "many" are like you, you should have no problem finding them. And while you are at it, be hardcore and walk everywhere until max level.

I could understand if you want a hardcore realm that uses the Diablo 3 (soon Legion) dungeon keystone system where you can roll to have mobs being shit hard. But everything else....hell...you could even skip the HM / normal week pre-mythic and go straight for mythic.

Because I am purposefully gimping myself on a realm where others won't be? It's a lot more interesting if you're on a server with people all under the same rule set competing. Not to mention that mobs still do no damage even without heirlooms.

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And dungeons still would be run as world content would be difficult, and without heirlooms you would want dungeon blues to make the leveling experience better.

[Flurryfang]

Fun is subjective, just because you may not enjoy does not mean others wouldn't.

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Blizzard had to implement them as certain realms were more low pop than others. The assumption is that with a smaller pool of realms for this system there are enough people in order for those system to be disabled.

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Obviously I don't have any numbers to back it up, but it sure does appeal to the outcry of legacy crowd and even if it would get 10k constant players would be worth it in terms of money if only running 1-2 servers for it.

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Well it's not really the ironman challenge as you can die as much as you want, and since it's official forced rule sets it's a bit different. There was no incentive to purposefully gimp yourself on a normal realm and do the ironman challenge.

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Only having mythic is not insane, it would just make the content take long to complete. It's a hardcore realm, and that is kinda the purpose behind it? :P

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This is something that should only be implemented and be kept in mind with Legion.

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Because I am purposefully gimping myself on a realm where others won't be? It's a lot more interesting if you're on a server with people all under the same rule set competing. Not to mention that mobs still do no damage even without heirlooms.

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And dungeons still would be run as world content would be difficult, and without heirlooms you would want dungeon blues to make the leveling experience better.

Now, my argumentation was based on people being able to play Mythic only on previous raids and not based on a system, in which future content was 1 difficulty only. Saying "only mythic is open", when it comes to future content, is just saying that content should only have 1 difficulty and it should be harder then the norm. I will support that, since i love not being able to kill content. It gives a challenge, where i have to work on my own skills to get over a barrier. But that would require blizzard to make enough content. No matter how hard you make content, people are always going to beat it faster then you think. People train, they begin to see patterns and they start to learn very quickly. Unless, these "mythic" only raids, have fights like un-nerfed HC Nefarien from BWD, where stacking classes and using odd comboes, is the only way to kill the boss, then you will need TBC amount of raids.


If that can be done, i am all for 1 difficulty raids.

[Keny]

I will instantly resub for this....

[Deleted]

Who would actually play on a realm like that if Mythic was same as Mythic on live?
No hardcore guild would roll there because because gimping themselves on purpose would put them behind on progression.

You can actually already choose not to use heirlooms and you can lock your XP until you're done with the questline in each zone.