wow hardcore ladder

[Cocoaisgood]

I just want to draw a little attention to a thread I posted on the official Suggestions forum, since I think it's a really great idea.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...04263482&sid=1
Here is the text of that post in case you would rather not follow the link.

World of Warcraft has become focused on endgame. It should be, maximum level is a guaranteed outcome for everyone who sticks to their character. But people still love to make new characters, and the leveling content is still worthwhile. Many people just don't share this though. A hardcore ladder could help turn this around.

First, what do I mean when I suggest a hardcore ladder? It is a familiar term to those who played Diablo II, another Blizzard game. In Diablo II, hardcore ladder characters were gone when they died - that is - permanently. This is too hardcore for World of Warcraft. I am not trying to suggest that for WoW.

A good implementation for WoW would be that when a character participating in the hardcore ladder dies, he/she resurrects into the non-ladder player base. Level and XP at time of death is recorded and secures a player's standing in the ladder.

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Restrictions:

To keep the ladder fair, hardcore ladder characters must have limited interaction with other characters. If the ladder is to create a competitive aspect to leveling, it must be pure.

Trade can only occur with other hardcore ladder players. This includes /trade, the mail, and all auction houses. Even items like the Heavy Leather Ball must be made so that they have no sell value or that non-hardcore players can't throw them at hardcore players.

Parties can only occur with other hardcore ladder players. Any other methods of sharing XP would have to be looked at too.

There are some gray area kind of issues too. An example is instances. Instances provide a controlled environment and it may be undesirable to allow people to just sit in an instance and grind out XP with little risk to themselves.

PvP would also have to be either disabled completely or restricted to existing rules of conflict and limited to hardcore vs hardcore and non-hardcore vs non-hardcore only. That is, "softcore" characters couldn't go around ganking hardcore ladder players and hardcore ladder characters can't just pick off non-hardcore players that can't attack back.

Heirloom items can't be used on hardcore ladder characters...

The ladder must last only a set period of time before it resets, a ladder season. At the end of a ladder season, awards should be granted based on position in the ladder and, in the case of maximum level characters, shortness of time to reach the level. Anything over two weeks though and I would expect all award-worthy characters to be 80...

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Implementation:

Hardcore characters need to be identifiable so players know how they can interact with them at a glance. A different color name or a full-body glow or something. An extensive use of phasing is possible... some people might like hardcore realms for this as well but I will detail good reason to keep this on existing realms at the bottom of this post.

The Armory is already in a good position to be able to list ladder rankings, which participants would have a very strong interest in.

A Feat of Strength for every level obtained while hardcore would be very cool, with each new level overwriting the old one. Perhaps people that make it all the way to 80 could/should be granted a title... Hardcore <name>.

Realms that have a hardcore ladder could maybe have a tickbox option at character creation for people to opt into the situation, though, since it only takes a death to get out of it, this may be unnecessary. Either way, an explanation of what someone is getting themself into should be provided at first log-in.

This would also provide a new situation for bonuses. Since there is no existing hardcore economy, gold becomes more uncommon again - maybe a vendor could be created that sells hardcore-only items or something. Maybe XP gain could be affected for as long as a person remains hardcore (double?).

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Ramifications:

The hardcore ladder has the potential to be embraced by the same players seen racing to the level cap on every new server that opens up, without having to open up new servers. Hardcore ladders could be held selectively on low population servers to create an emigration of players to the servers that need it.

At the end of the ladder season, players would receive a reward, similar to how the top players of an arena season receive a mount and/or a title (or other creative non-advantage-giving reward). And this really demonstrates exactly what this is, too. The arena was created to become competitive PvP. The hardcore ladder represents competitive PvE.

For your consideration,
Cocoa of Tichondrius

[Horn]

No?

[Varithorn1]

Why is this needed?


Answered my own question, its not. Your hardcore ladder sounds more like a hardcore guild gone elitist. Why should I not be able to do stuff with casual friends simply because I am hardcore?

[llDemonll]

you're retarded.

diaf.

[enoesiw]

I'm sorry but this is one of the stupidest ideas ever. You said it yourself, WoW is focused on ENDGAME. Doing something like this would defeat the purpose of WoW.

Besides I can already tell you than every "hardcore" player competing in the "hardcore ladder" would just roll a hunter because everyone knows huntards are the easiest and quickest class to level.

If you really wanted to be "hardcore" you would be competing for realm firsts in raids.

[redwitchy]

you're retarded.

diaf.

this

[Deleted]

this

Ya, that is more fail then his post. Thanks.

Ontopic; The idea isn't for WoW, it's nice, but it's not how they created WoW, if you want to be competitive join a arena game or grind the endgame heroic achievements. You can't turn this game into Diablo 2 :P, wait for D3 instead ^^

[GAfo]

And yea, while diablo was "hard" when it comes to level (loads of mobs and so on), in wow you can just find a place with green mobs and faceroll everything without any single trouble, everyone would have his toon at 80 and after a month noone would play hardcore anymore.

[Cantthink]

what happens when you lag out and die? jesus you would be pissed.

the reason it worked on diablo is because you could lvl to 40 (sort of the first stage of the last lvl) in about 6 hours.

ok getting to 99 on hardcore was hard but it still wasnt as retarded as WoW Hc mode.

even at ther end of D2's patch life they still never fully managed to stop higher lvl chars killing lowbies.