Hardcore

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Hardcore characters are exactly the same as regular characters, except that they are mortal. When they die, they stay dead. Forever. No restarting in town; no restarting anywhere.

Dead hardcore characters in Diablo 2 are able to log back onto the Battle.net chat channels, but they can not join or create games. It's not known how this aspect of things will be handled in Diablo III.


D3 Hardcore Confirmed

After months of "probably" type comments, Hardcore was confirmed as a Diablo 3 feature in August, 2010. Here's a brief timeline of official statements on the subject.


D3 Hardcore Characters Will Look Special

How HC chars will differ isn't yet known, but the D3 Team has repeatedly said they'll be set apart from regular characters in some obvious fashion. [1]

Will hardcore characters be more powerful than normal? --Spectrusv
No intent, no. But they’ll definitely have more prestige and flashy things to show off for being so awesome. --Diablo


June 2008

From the Diablo 3 Design Fundamentals panel, at the 2008 WWI event:

Q: Will there be Hardcore mode?
A: We haven't decided yet, but I don't see why we wouldn't. It’s not a decision we need to make yet. We probably will, though.

April 2009

Bashiok in a forum post.[2]

Question: Has anymore thought been put into Hardcore? Are any features decided-upon?
Bashiok: I think the last thing I heard from Jay on it in public was something along the lines of “Ok fine we’ll just commit to a hardcore mode here and now” outside of that no details have been released.

August 2010

In an interview with GameSpot AU, Jay Wilson confirmed that Hardcore is definitely returning to Diablo III.[3]

Hardcore is definitely returning to Diablo III, but we haven’t decided what sort of special Battle.net features we’ll enable with it. We want to make sure that if you see a HC char on B.net, you’ll know they’re HC. It’s a status symbol, and it’s only one if you know. We’re looking for ways to reward players, and we’re sure we’ll have a set of HC achievements also.

Paying to Resurrect Hardcore Characters?

This concept was initially floated in a forum post by Blizzard's Diablo 3 Community Manager Bashiok, in July 2009. [4]. Reaction from the Hardcore community was fairly outraged and almost entirely negative[5], and when the issue came up again in April 2010, Bashiok said it had been pretty much ruled out.[6]

Paying to bring back a fallen hardcore character was something I read someone here post once, and I simply repeated it to say I thought it was an interesting idea. I’m not a designer. Things I find interesting doesn’t mean they’re being implemented. I have though heard Jay (who is lead designer) say that paying to bring back hardcore is pretty much a horrible idea.

Perks and Difficulty

With the introduction of the banner system, hardcore characters now gain a bit of prestige in the form of added decoration options to a hardcore player's banner, including bloodied skulls littering the base of it.

Hardcore players are not receiving a gentle treatment, much to the delight of fans. There will be certain tweaks to the game that may make the game even more difficult than the softcore counterpart, such as adding debuffs to bosses that effectively nerf the effectiveness of a player, causing them to have to play even more cautiously than before.

In addition to this, Blizzard has no plans to go easy on hardcore players in the new Inferno difficulty mode, as explained by Bashiok[7]:

We don’t have any plans to restrict or change the game difficulty for Hardcore characters. Surviving the challenges thrown at you by outplaying them is the entire point. Hardcore characters that take on Inferno and survive will be granted cosmetic rewards for their efforts.


Arena PvP

The current plan, as of late 2010, is for Hardcore dueling to work just like a PvM hardcore game (and not like the normal Arena, where it's team-based, games last for 15 minutes, and the team with the most total round victories wins). In the Hardcore Arena, as initially planned, any death is the end of a character. There's no team play, and no best of 5 or 7, and no 15 minutes of play, as in the regular Arena. One death = no more character, whether that takes 10 seconds or 2 minutes, and whether that char's team wins after his death.

Jay Wilson enthused about instant perma-death Hardcore dueling at Blizzcon 2010, and @Diablo repeated that in November 2010. [8]

If you PvP in hardcore and you die, you’re dead. Hardcore PvP leader board is going to be... hardcore! --Diablo
Yeah, it’ll be hardcore, but it undermines your Arena design. How can you have 3 rounds if you die forever in the first one? --NocturneGS
It doesn’t undermine anything. Although I would expect it to become most popular at specific skill tier unlocks.—Diablo

However, Jay Wilson has alluded to internal conflict on this issue, where some employees wish for hardcore death to not apply in PVP, fearing that no player would ever want to enter a match due to the heavy losses that they would be almost certain to face.


Hardcore Dueling Arguments

This has proven a very contentious subject, with strong opinions on both sides. Some threads with much debate about the issue:

Hardcore Dueling Game Mode Suggestions

There are numerous fan suggestions to make HC dueling like SC dueling by people who are afraid of dieing.

  • An arena practice mode which would work just like SC dueling. Perma-death duels would remain an option if both players agreed.
  • A best-of format for HC duels, where the most kills in 5 or 10 or 15 minutes would rule out, and the other team would die. (How to stop disconnects before the time limit is an issue.)
    • Equipment wagering penalty. The characters in a duel put up all (or some) of their equipment as bond; if they leave the game before the conclusion, all of their gear goes to the other team/player. This would punish chicken-hack disconnecters, while hurting someone who got actually did lose connection, but at least leaving their character alive.
  • A team format, where all 3 players on a team would stay alive if that team won. This could go one single round, or best of 3/5/7 rounds, to make it more skill and less luck-based than a single fall match.

Additional HC Content

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