Hardcore does not mean what you think it means. This means you, mister my guild raids three times a week, and we're trying to down Hogger. This ALSO means you, mister I've killed everything in this expansion and have all the best gear, but have never been on a progression kill because I conveniently take the first three months of an expansion off. Hardcore means going out and killing things. Big things. On a regular basis. It's not an indicator of time spent killing things, or uberosity of gear. It's about being on the bleeding edge of content, and constantly pushing for more bigger mobs, more better skills, and more phatter lewts. (Grammar means NOTHING to the truly hardcore, as they live on voice chat, and scoff at the idea of wasting precious GCDs typing things in chat.)
Back in ye olden dayes, when the original Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot were serious business, hardcore was more or less synonymous with raiding. Face it. The first EQ raids were zergfests where you got as many people as you could and threw them at dragons. People were on dialup. People were playing on computers with less under the hood than my Nintendo DSi. Making parse meant turning on auto attack and MAYBE getting off a few casts. Being an effective healer meant having a stopwatch next to your computer synched to whoever was before you in the complete heal chain. If you wanted that mob, you had to sit and stare at where it spawned until it popped and killed you. Then you threw up the guild batsignal (hai 2 u, call list managers) and hoped you were first in force. If you weren't the first in force, you still probably stuck around on the offchance that you could pull while the other raid was doing their CR/drag/rez routine. In short, raiding meant putting everything else on hold to make progression, spending days at a time building up to a raid and then hours upon hours clearing because raid zones were open-world and all bosses were contested. Oh, and if you died you had to start at the beginning.
We've come a long way as raiders since then. While World of Warcraft's all-instance approach to group and raid content was initially met with some hostility and trepidation by raiders (what do you mean, everyone can get a shot at Onyxia?!), instances have become more or less standard, and raiding has become a right rather than a privilege. It's like purple pixels- designers discovered that epics (or fabled loot in the EQ games, or whatever the convention is for your game) make people happy, so they decided to give EVERYONE epics. Back in the day, top-quality loot was RARE. Like, you might see two or three a week if you were beasting all the content available. (EQ2 Desert of Flames raids, I'm looking at you. You bastards.) Now it's not a question of "are you fully epic'd?" because you are. Of course you are. You have a pulse and you can avoid irritating people long enough to survive a pickup group.
Killing endgame bosses and having endgame loot doesn't make you hardcore any more. Raiding multiple nights just means that you show up, not that you're committed to progress and challenges, or that you're willing to put everything on hold until you've found the solution to a bossfight or to lock down a contested spawn. Modern hardcore is defined more by mindset and habits than content cleared or eliteness of gear. Also, in this age of legacy guilds, multiple charter guilds, and all that good stuff, tag doesn't automatically confer hardcore status any more. Sure, you're in a world first guild, but that doesn't make you a world first player. Yet.
Signs that you are not hardcore:
- If you have not slogged through progression, gritted your teeth through wipe after wipe after wipe, and pored over combat logs and videos to figure out how to beat a boss, you are not hardcore.
- If you have not on more than one occasion extended your raid night well past its end time just to see that boss finally dead, you are not hardcore.
- If you cannot figure out your own strategies for new bosses, you are not hardcore.
- If you cannot figure out your own spec and gearing, you are not hardcore.
- Being hardcore does not require minmaxing. Being hardcore DOES involve knowing enough, and pushing yourself to understand your game and your class well enough to figure out an approximation of your optimal setup without having some website or forum guru walk you through it in monosyllabic words. With screenshots.
- If you are not willing to guildkick people, or at least bench them to further your raid progression, you are not hardcore.
- Face it. Not everyone is a winner, and some people need to be carried. You cannot always afford to carry them. It's not any kind of reflection on you or them, it simply is.
- If you are not willing to be benched, put on stand-by, or sidelined to further progression, you are not hardcore.
- Being hardcore requires dedication to the guild and the raid team. If you are not willing to set aside your goddamned ego so that the raid can progress, you are not hardcore. You are a twat.
- If you downgrade your weapons because they aren't pretty enough, or your build because it doesn't fit concept, you are not hardcore.
- If you are not killing mobs before the nerfs hit, you are not hardcore.
- If you have to ask "am I hardcore?" You are not hardcore.
Yes. Things like call lists are part of being hardcore. If there is something out there with potential upgrades or challenges, and she has not downed it yet, a hardcore will do everything in her power to make sure she is the next person to bury her sharp pointy things in that whatever it is's skull. It may seem extreme, but it's the only way some people know how to play. There's nothing wrong with being hardcore, and there's nothing wrong with NOT being hardcore. Problems only arise when people misrepresent themselves and their play styles, and start crowing about things they have no right to crow about. I don't care that you're not 100% dedicated to the game, going over strats in your sleep, and naming your kids after your faction leader. I don't care that you're on a call list, have had Superbadman on lockdown since the expansion hit, and you can clear every EXTREME ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE OF PWNAGE mode dungeon in one night. While drunk. With your cat boxing his cleric on autofollow. It's a game. Play however you have the most fun. Just don't slap me in the face with your playstyle and expect me to ask for another, or beg for your autograph.
And for the record, I am not hardcore. I just like killing shit. I tried to be hardcore for a good few years, but that just lost me a lot of friends and made me a LOT of enemies. (I totally got myself blacklisted for a while after flying off the handle at someone during a contested call and posting a bunch of angry nervous breakdown crap on their forums.) I have spent a good amount of time rubbing elbows with the hardest of the hardcore, because they're freaking goldmines of information for how to beat the system, make money in your sleep, and weird synergies that often get overlooked that make things like inquisitor tanks and ranger healers work.
Common myths about hardcore gamers:
Common myths about hardcore gamers:
- Hardcores have no lives
- Actually, most of the hardcores I've known have active social lives outside of the game. They LARP, they go to concerts, they're on PTA, they play other games, they go to church, they dance and go clubbing, they knit... Being dedicated to the game doesn't mean never taking time for the arr ell.
- Hardcores are unemployed bastards
- This is true in some cases. A lot of cases. Unemployment means total freedom to sit in front of the computer and drool on yourself until the zone boss pops. Being unemployed makes you an ideal candidate for Keeper of the Call List and Recruiting Officer, because you are ALWAYS. AROUND.
- Hardcores live on cheetos and moutain dew
- Um. No. Duh? That orange goo that gets all over your fingers when you eat cheetos gums up your keyboard, which increases latency between keypress and skill activation. And with all the caffeine in Mountain Dew, you have to pee a LOT. AFKs cut into valuable raiding time. If you have to drink, drink water. If you have to eat, pick something mess-free like rice cakes or celery or M&Ms.
- Hardcores have no girlfriends
- Hardcores usually game WITH their significant others. It's the only way to keep a healthy relationship going when technically speaking you're a bigamist and your other spouse is your game. The spouse is often not also a hardcore, but there are plenty of documented cases of hardcore husband/wife and boyfriend/girlfriend duos. Be worried if they're your guild leaders.
- Hardcores are better than the rest of us
- Not better, just different. It's a lifestyle choice, like being goth or driving a Prius. Choosing a particular lifestyle does not make you better than anyone else. Not even you, Mitt Romney. (And no, Mitt Romney is not a hardcore.)
- Hardcores are assholes
- Some hardcores are assholes. Some are totally amazing people that will bend over backwards to give a girl the hookup. (Or a guy. Or a genderless grey alien.) It's like everything else- you've got your cool people and your cock sandwiches.
- Hardcores don't want you to have things
- If it will shut you up and keep their content from getting nerfed, hardcores will more than likely let you have whatever you want. And honestly, after a certain point most hardcores will happily carry you through whatever (for a price) if you ask. Some will even omg do it for free.
- Hardcores are better in bed
- I don't know where this one started, but dedication to progression and sexual performance have nothing in common. This one goes out to the guys in Agnitionum, because I think I heard it on your vent server. Being hardcore does not make you a better lover. Sorry guys. We are still <3 even though.
Tomorrow: Taking it easy, or Casual doesn't mean you have to be a complete and utter fucking waste of my time.
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