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Here on the Internet Gaming Zone, thousands of adventurers pour into the World of Sanctuary each night to battle the Prime Evils. Most of them do it the safe way. A brave and slightly mad few choose Hardcore, where a hero gets one life and one life only.
The rule is brutally simple. When a Hardcore character falls, that character is dead for good. No town revive, no walking back to your corpse, no second chance. Deckard Cain cannot stitch you back together. The screen fades, the deed is logged, and your fighter joins the ranks of the departed, able to chat with the living as a ghost but never again to swing a sword or cast a spell.
Blizzard does not hand Hardcore out for free. Before you may forge a permadeath hero on the Battle.net realms, you must first raise an ordinary character to Level 20. Only then does the option unlock, a small rite of passage that keeps the truly green out of the graveyard.
The Thrill
Why do it? Because every single fight matters. Consider how differently each class must play when there are no do-overs:
- A Sorceress husbanding every last point of mana
- A Barbarian counting his healing potions before a boss door
- A Necromancer hiding behind a wall of raised skeletons
- A Paladin holding his aura and never dropping his guard
- An Amazon loosing arrows from the safety of the back rank
- A Druid summoning his spirits and grizzly to soak the blows
- An Assassin laying her traps before the enemy draws near
Each of them plays every second like it is the last, because it might be. Standing over the corpse of Baal in Act V with a character who has never once died is a badge no softcore hero can wear.
The Loss
And oh, the losses. A missed town portal against Duriel. A stubborn pack of Gloams in the frozen north of Harrogath. A hostile duelist who flips the flag and hunts you for keeps. Worst of all, a lag spike or a dropped connection at exactly the wrong instant. Any one of these can end a hero you nursed for a hundred hours, and every rune, every runeword, every charm, set piece and hard-won unique item vanishes into nothing with them.
That is the bargain of Hardcore. Nothing is guaranteed, so everything counts. We will see you on the realms, and mind your health orb.
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