I would love a permanent hardcore server

[trancefate]

I see a lot of complaints that hardcore league is "draining" the regular servers.
This is an indication that people enjoy playing hardcore.

I've been active on and off since beta and I'll be honest, the past few years I only play during HC because it's just more fun.
Give us a full time hardcore server, you can do leagues within this if you want to.

I would love the thrill of dying on a 15th life character with tomes.



The other servers need merged, you have to figure out a way to do it because most servers are below the critical mass of player base to keep them healthy and have been for some time.

[mikarddo]

I see a lot of complaints that hardcore league is "draining" the regular servers.
This is an indication that people enjoy playing hardcore.

I've been active on and off since beta and I'll be honest, the past few years I only play during HC because it's just more fun.
Give us a full time hardcore server, you can do leagues within this if you want to.

I would love the thrill of dying on a 15th life character with tomes.

The other servers need merged, you have to figure out a way to do it because most servers are below the critical mass of player base to keep them healthy and have been for some time.

You can play hardcore on any server you like. Just delete the character if you die!

[ekaterina]

Merging servers is a terrible idea until lag gets fixed - if it ever is. Having one or two jumbo servers would not end well. Even apart from lag - some people like higher populations but some people like servers that are smaller and more personal. Why would you want to drive all of the second group away from the game? Not to mention all the people who lose their names - well their characters' names - as part of a merger. Or their guild names.

For those of us that enjoy the extra challenge of death being permanent - as noted above you can do the obvious - just delete any character that dies. This has the advantage that if you die due to a game crash, power failure, major bug or the like you can reasonably decide not to delete whereas on hardcore the character is simply gone.

The only way I would be happy with a merger is if it was accompanied by a new "fresh start" server. Among the advantages - people would have a shot at favorite names that are currently unavailable because someone used them for 5 minutes 10 years ago. One of the truly disliked distinctions between LOTRO and DDO is that in LOTRO there *are* ways to get names that haven't been used in ages and where the account may not have even paid a thing to SSG in ages, if ever.

[Coffey]

I see a lot of complaints that hardcore league is "draining" the regular servers.
This is an indication that people enjoy playing hardcore.

I've been active on and off since beta and I'll be honest, the past few years I only play during HC because it's just more fun.
Give us a full time hardcore server, you can do leagues within this if you want to.

I would love the thrill of dying on a 15th life character with tomes.



The other servers need merged, you have to figure out a way to do it because most servers are below the critical mass of player base to keep them healthy and have been for some time.

I was a proponent for this too. For me it is about time. I cant play every day, all day, every evening, all evening because the game gets boring for me. I take a lot of breaks.

HCL has a reasonable amount of time to accomplish goals as long as there are no set backs. Being keen to play helps to avoid setbacks.

SSG skimped on everything that was necessary to build a large player base to support an ever expanding level gap (and player power gap). While i would like a permanent HCL server a lot of people are now getting bored with HCL and want to have one season per year.

Without new players we have mostly the old player base/ returning player base on HCL and it will become totally stale at this rate.

[Memnir]

If we had it as a common, everyday HC server - it would rapidly have the same population issues as the regular servers. If not slightly worse because of the very reasons why it's popular and populated when active. The concept would stagnate and become boring. It's populated because it's not an everyday thing. It's popular because it offers rewards for progression with an end date, and FOMO is a hell of a drug. People would very quickly tire of spending money on the server because there is no FOMO rewards to dash towards.

As others have noted, if you like the allure of permadeath as a playsyle - there is nothing preventing you from doing so on the regular servers. Pick one you've not played on before to start fresh, and then delete the character if/when they die. If you don't have the discipline to do that and want the enforced permadeath of the HC server to do it for you, then I'd wager permadeath wasn't really the allure all along. Could be wrong, but I'd still wager on it.

[drathdragon]

I am not Nostradamus, no Detective Columbo either..

but i tell you this: the day that SSG will decide to do a permanent Hardcore server, this game will be definitively dead.

[Coffey]

As others have noted, if you like the allure of permadeath as a playsyle - there is nothing preventing you from doing so on the regular servers. Pick one you've not played on before to start fresh, and then delete the character if/when they die. If you don't have the discipline to do that and want the enforced permadeath of the HC server to do it for you, then I'd wager permadeath wasn't really the allure all along. Could be wrong, but I'd still wager on it.

There are Permadeath guilds if thats still a thing since HCL came along to fill the void.

The HCL draws a large active server population all starting with new characters. A lot would rather not deal with set backs while attaining their goals but still choose the server because it offers a lot of people to play with on an equal playing field.

[ekaterina]

If people flock to hardcore because they want a more populated place to play - or because they want a fresh start - and not because they actually like the ruleset there - an obvious approach comes to mind.

Merge the existing servers into a smaller number of servers and open a new "fresh start" server. Eliminate the hardcore league because it will no longer have a use - at least for a few years until the new server becomes an old server,

On the other hand - I suspect a lot of us *do* like the "one death and you are out" ruleset so this wouldn't work after all. Oh well.