A group of hardcore players in WoW Classic creates the almost unbelievable. Characters with only one life dare to enter raids and pass.
World of Warcraft, in its classic form, is old – very old. At almost 20 years of age, anyone interested has had enough time to memorize every corner of the MMORPG. But some are thirsty for new challenges and that’s exactly what the “hardcore” community has set for itself.
And as if the hardcore challenge wasn’t difficult enough, they went one step further. They mastered the raid “Blackwing Lair” – without a player dying.
What does “Hardcore” mean in WoW Classic? While the rules differ slightly in definition depending on the group, there is one key pillar that all hardcore characters agree on:
“Death = Delete” – If the character dies once, it will be deleted. There are only exceptions if it can be proven beyond any doubt that the death was caused by a Blizzard error (e.g. a server crash). Otherwise the character will be deleted immediately.
In addition, there are usually other rules: The auction house may not be used, interaction in groups is only permitted for dungeons and raids, and it is not permitted to be “pulled” by higher characters or to trade with others.
The guild “HC Elite” managed to master the raid “Blackwing Lair” (Blackwing Lair or “BWL”) a few days ago – and that with a pure squad of hardcore characters in the “classic era”.
The whole raid only took about 2 hours and boss fights were over extremely quickly. Vaelastrasz fell after just 32 seconds while the final boss Nefarian lasted 2:22 minutes. A look at the raid’s Warcraft logs is interesting.
Here are the final seconds of the raid as seen by streamer “GordanRamseyStreaming”:
The death mechanic was bypassed with a trick: A veteran or two will now be scratching their heads in confusion and asking, “But didn’t Blackwing Lair have guaranteed deaths?” Yes, it did. The fight against Vaelastrasz is notorious for player deaths.
After all, the dragon “blesses” people with the “Burning Adrenaline” debuff every few seconds. Although this massively increases the damage caused and turns all spells into instant spells, it burns 5% of the character’s life points every second and ensures a guaranteed death at the end of the effect.
However, this can be avoided with a trick: the hearthstone. Because the hearthstone also becomes an instantaneous spell with the debuff, so you can leave the raid directly. Exiting the raid removes the debuff, allowing players to safely end up in an inn and continue their hardcore careers.
What’s so special about it? What’s impressive about this feat isn’t just that Blackwing Lair was completed without a death. Several groups did that back then. No – what is impressive is a combination of two circumstances:
After all, one must not forget: Just one mistake could lead to a domino effect in which several characters lose their lives and thus have to be deleted. Also, the fact that there wasn’t anyone there to “troll it at the last moment” is pretty impressive in this day and age.
You can think what you want about the (low) difficulty of WoW Classic. But the performance that “HC Elite” has achieved here can hardly be disputed. If so, be sure to read about it in the comments.
Incidentally, Blizzard seems to be working on a hardcore mode for WoW itself.