20 Video Game Hard Modes For True Masochists

Nostalgia can be one hell of a drug, and World of Warcraft has definitely proven this with the resounding success of its WoW Classic servers, providing the series’ fans with a (mostly) authentic experience of the game in its earliest and most popular stages.

However, you know what an even stronger dopamine pusher is? Suffering. And this is exactly why people fell in love with Classic Hardcore.

Classic Hardcore servers deliver the same vanilla experience as regular Classic servers, but with a particularly punishing twist: your character has only one life. Unlike regular WoW, which allows you to respawn every time you die, in Classic Hardcore, even a single death will immediately cost you your character.

The punishment is absolutely brutal as is, considering how easy it is to die due to a stupid mistake or an annoying ganker in regular World of Warcraft. However, the challenge is made even more sadistic, given the fact that it’s part of the Classic experience, and vanilla WoW is stripped of a lot of the conveniences of later iterations that make survival easier.

And yet still, when it just came out, Classic Hardcore was one of the most popular modes for the game. WoW fans just love to suffer, it seems.