Fill me in on the History of "Hardcore" servers in MMORPG's (1 Viewer)

[Frybread]

I see posts on the WoW forums all the time begging for a "hardcore" server, but each nerd has his own definition of what a hardcore server is, and each one likely harbors the fantasy that they would be the baddest dude, and of course would never be the victim.

Could this be why "Hardcore" servers start off with high populations that eventually dwindle so low that developers lose interest in supporting them?

Blizzard has never stated a desire to create any sort of special rules server, but people keep asking, and not without reason. Almost every popular MMORPG has had some sort of special rules server tailor-made for difficulty, especially in regards to PvP.

World of Warcraft is known for copying the successful traits of other MMORPG's, so I think we can get a good idea if they will make a "hardcore" server by looking at past "hardcore" servers for other games.

Here's what I got for Everquest:

Rallos Zek
Launched: '99
Why?: The developers caved in to community demand. Originally players on any server could choose to be "PvP Flagged" or not, but once a PvP-only server came out all the players who wanted to be PvP simply went there - which effectively ruined the "PvP Flag" idea.
The special rules: Free for all, players within 4 levels of one another could kill and loot one item from their victim.
What was it like?: Though chaotic random killing was somewhat common at low levels, PvP at higher levels was quite rare. This could be because items were difficult to obtain, and losing one caused much grief. High level PvP was mainly used as a way for one guild to intimidate and control another, purely political - if it was used at all. High level random player killers were usually outcast from the community, making it nearly impossible for them to attend raids.
Was it successful? (in terms of player population): Initially yes, but after a few months, no. Though compared with other PvP servers, yes, it's population was equal to or greater than the rest on average.


Sullon Zek
Launched: '01 (this was the first Everquest server billed as "Hardcore")
Why?: Probably because the development read enough whiney posts by "Hardcore" pvp'ers and finally listened to them.
The special rules: It was called the "no rules" server, but that referred to player's actions. The hard-coded rules gave players 3 teams to choose from, each seperated by religion. There were no level limits on PvP, though you could not kill players on your own team. Players within 5 levels of each other would lose experience on death. There was nothing to be gained by killing other players. Players on opposite teams could not cast beneficial spells on one another.
What was it like?: PvP was common and random at all levels. If a player could kill you, they usually would. The teams were horribly lopsided, though all teams were able to achieve high level raiding guilds, one team clearly dominated the others.
Was it successful?: Initially yes, it had more players than any other server, but after a few months, no. Its small community loved it dearly, but it was the least popular server in Everquest - until Discord anyway.

Discord
Launched: '03 (?)
Why? Some sadistic asshole on the dev team must have been pretty influential. Discord was billed as a temporary contest to see who could survive in the most brutal server for Everquest in anticipation for an upcoming expansion pack, "Gates of Discord".
The Special Rules: Permanent character death, even if the character died due to NPC's. No teams. No guilds. Other players could loot every single item off of a dead player. The winners (the players who were still alive and had the most kills) were allowed to keep their character and move it to a server of their choice.
What was it like?: Pure chaos. If you got past level 10, you were an amazing player. The excitement of knowing your character's death was permanent made every little fight - even against monsters, exciting. However, death was almost inevitable and the penalty so harsh that it was tough to muster the will to start over again.
Was it successful?: Like all experimental servers it was wildly popular at first, and then the numbers dwindled. In the case of Discord, the numbers fell to all-time lows in its final weeks, with only 200 to 300 players on at a time. (normal Everquest servers had 1,500 to 2,000 players on at a time)


Can anyone fill me in on other games with HARDCORE servers? I think we could get a good idea of the odds of seing one in World of Warcraft if we had a bit more info from other MMO's.

DAoC?
Asheron's Call?
Anarchy Online?

 

[The Squealing Fairy]

Ultima Online - (Hardcore servers? All of them)
Launched: '98
Why?: The idea was to create a fantasy world, yet with realism. Meaning, players were expected to be their own police and do their good deeds and dastardly acts as they desired, and they were also expected to enact their own justice.
The special rules: No spamming or macroing,from what I recall.
What was it like?: Outside of the very small main towns, there weren't really any "safe" areas. People could steal from you, kill you, loot every last thing you owned from your corpse... hack up your corpse, build chairs around you, and trap you. Whatever. If you commited some crimes, your name would turn from blue to grey, and if you slaughtered a lot of players whose names were blue, your name would eventually be red. This system had loopholes though. You could go slaughter as many innocent newbies as you wanted, then go do enough quests and earn a blue name again. Through an expansion, called "Rennesaince", they introduced new content, and the zones were consentual PvP only. Some players loved it, some hated it, from what I heard. I didn't stick around long enough to see it. The release of EQ1 came out, and I left UO.
Was it successful? (in terms of player population): In some ways, yes. It's the longest running MMORPG. Although, it's not as widely played as world of Warcraft, obviously.

Here is a 2 year old RPG Vault interview with one of the prodcers of UO. He gives a history on how the game used to work, and how it works now. IT's 2 years old, but it provides some insight into what they were trying to acheive with this game.

 

[3rectus]

UO-Siege Perilous

Alijah beat me to Yew O.

Seige Perilous
UO came out with its version of a hardcore server called "Seige Perilous." They retarded the skill rate, so that raising skills was very freaking hard; so much so that people joked about it as the "perma newbie" server. They increased the prices on everything at stores, I think things costed 3x as much as it would on a normal server. I never played SP, but I think it was very guild oriented; in 1999-2000 things on my server were very hot and it was an exciting time so I never jumped for it.

You can get the description from UO itself, but here are some of the relevant things:

Prepare yourselves brave travelers, for Siege Perilous truly will test your skills as a player. Aggressors who chose to alienate themselves from their fellow adventurers will find quickly it is a struggle to simply survive. Only those who can master the arts of teamwork, communication and trade, as well as combat, will prosper in this challenging world.

The true path to success on Siege Perilous is through making allies. As one cannot possibly have all of the skills necessary to obtain every resource essential to survival, setting up trade agreements with other players will often offer the best chance of prosperity. Those who shoot first and ask questions later could quickly find themselves alone and lacking in supplies.

Magic:

Spellcasters adventuring in Siege Perilous should be wary of the changes to their trade. Most noticeably, the spell “recall” will not function.


You will not be able to mark runes in dungeons nor cast Gate while in a dungeon.
For those involved in faction or guild wars, it is vitally important to note that direct damage spells will work in towns.
The spells Blade Spirits and Energy Vortex have been weakened significantly.
Telekinesis will not work on trapped or locked chests.

PvP/PKing (note, at this point in the game the devs had put stat loss and skill loss upon murderers as a penalty if they died. In old Dread Lord days the only penalty you got was that you couldnt openly walk into town (you would get killed), but you could get around that by recalling into town on like a box or stack of boxes and thus still access your bank ;p) Your murders decayed with time, so say if you killed 20 people, and didnt kill anyone for a month, you could get out of stat loss.)

Adventurers of ill repute will quickly notice that Siege Perilous has no stat-loss of any kind for murders. However, the smart criminal will avoid all cities except Buccaneer’s Den, as all town guards will kill murders on sight! Criminals may travel the wilderness without worry of guards, as they will not patrol the wilderness areas.

Additionally:


There will be wandering healers willing to resurrect those that stray from the path of good.
The shrines will no longer forgive murderers of their crimes (as they did on Abyss) and therefore, one cannot remove their murder counts by visiting a shrine.
Killing an innocent human NPC will result in a Long-term and a Short-term murder count.
You can not assign gold to a bounty when murdered.
The gate to the lawless town of Buccaneers’ Den will no longer be present.
Although you must still be in the Thieves Guild to steal from players, you will not be removed from the guild for collecting a murder count, nor are there any skill or time requirements to meet before joining. The NPCs will defend themselves against thieves and will attack any thief who steals from them outside of town. Also, one cannot steal an item randomly, you must actually “snoop” a pack and select a specific item.
Murderers and Criminals will not be able to kick/ban others from their home, nor will they be able to insta-log.
The title “Murderer” has been done away with, murderers will now show their karma/fame title.
The Hero/Evil system will be present on Siege Perilous

Lum the Mad nostalgia link!

oh yea, and here is the thing about the "greedy" npcs:

The shopkeepers on Siege Perilous hoard their gold greedily and will not buy items from players. They are, however, more than happy to sell their wares…at three times the cost of other shards!

Townspeople will also charge three times as much for hiring them. Player Vendors will charge 3x as much for their services.

NPCs will not have any gold in their backpacks and therefore, you will not be able to steal from them or kill them to get their gold.

Townspeople requesting escort will not travel with someone who is already escorting another, you may only have one escort at a time. As with all NPCs, they will not have any items on their persons either and the only way they will part with their gold is if you actually bring them to their desired location. You must also wait 15 minutes between each escort.

Considering these differences and the ones noted under “Your Character”, it would be very wise to befriend, rather than to attack, your local tradesmen. A skilled blacksmith, alchemist, tailor, or scribe can be a very powerful ally.

 

[3rectus]

memory purge

just a few bits from memory about other games that I did not play, but knew about.

AC-Darktide. Big show down between The Mercs and DDH and SiN; these guilds hit games early when games are not broken down to a science, and then leave after everyone else "figures it out." This generally causes the "new kids on the block" to start smack talking, saying how for example, SiN (who people usually throw this complaint at), doesnt have the stones to fight everyone once everyone gets on equal terms. You have to respect these guys though, they have sacrificed lives, women, "great bods" and expensive cars in exchange to be eternally hated by every 15-17 year old high school student.

Funny story about Bone Dancer (leader of SiN): his wife wanted him to come to dinner, he said hold on a second (he was at the PC), and she hit him over the head with a frying pan. haha, ahhh yea.

Darktide was an FFA server with no safe zones, and this is where all the shit "Oh man its going to be the show down of show downs, the server where all the big guilds finally throw down the guantlet" got started. Every major PK guild that survived UO said they were the best, and that they could take anyone. Since that time, everyone has been looking for "The Server" that will allow all the hardcores to finally settle who is The Most Impressive Loser. Current contenders are the usual suspects: SiN, SoB, DDH, TM, Stonecutters, SuN, KoC (Blood Monarchy in AC), LoDoom, Lords of the Dead [LotD], CC [Covetous Crew] and some evil role playing guild, but I cant remember them. Same thing happened again in Shadowbane; everyone thought this was going to be the hardest of hardcore and that we could all finally see who was the best. Shit talked lasted for 5 years, the game for less than one maybe? SiN dominated from what I remember under the name of r30, rolling 30s. Then one of their members hacked the game and they all basically left shortly after that.

Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Chessapeak I remember as being the big name servers for UO, with Atlantic being the oldest of old school, and Great Lakes following close behind because of SiN/SoB/DDH and maybe TOC (The Obsidian Circle)...TOC might have been on Atlantic for a little while, but I cant remeber anymore.

After UO I was basically reduced to playing EQ casually in the summers because college was more important than "pwning." I still observed from the bbs bench though :[

From what I recall, Balor from TM thought that AC pvp was the best in a long time, even better than UO, or said another way, as good as DSO (Dark Sun Online). I think it had a lot of FPS play style to PvP: you could actually dodge arrows and spells, and you could jump over them (jumping was a skill or something, so you could jack it up and literally jump so high that you could heal yourself up while in the air and jump so high that people couldnt attack you--kinda like temporary immunity to recover if things were going bad heh) and there was strafing and all that good stuff.

did some digging and here is what I found:
http://everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=1389755

awesome indepth history of Darktide: http://sw.virtues.net/past-present/history.html

DAoC I know had something like an FFA server where they basically abolished the teams, but other than that I dont know much about it or care about it because it seems too much like a damn EQ clone.

kinda jumbled post, maybe I'll make it more coherent later.

 

[Frybread]

Wow, thanks guys!

I'll try to dig up some info on that DAoC server.

 

[isobelle]

diablo 2 is where i think a lot of the wow players 'graduated from'.

after beating the game on nightmare (or hell, or something) difficulty, you could shoose to play the game on a mode that was actually called 'hardcore'.

death was permanent, although the only thing lootable from dead players was their severed ears and half of their gold.

you could drop items on the ground in diablo, and pick them up again, and the ear made an especially nice 'squishing' noise when dropped.

since diablo 2 was limited to a lobby system, with 4 player limits on games, you would invariably log in to find the main town littered with ears, and some superbadass (or so he would invariably think) standing there just begging you to leave town.


duping was rampant, and 1 shot kills were all you got. people would flag themselves for PVP and a message (bob expresses hostility towards you) would flash across the screen. this was the signal for noobs to either townportal or hit the 'escape > exit game' macro.

my friends would lock themselves in their rooms with large 'do not disturb HARDCORE' papers taped to the door.




i loved diablo, but never got into the hardcore aspect since one artificially powerful (spell rank books duped) fireball could kill you before you even saw the other player on your screen.


best (non related) diablo memories are playing with a friend on the keyboard and me on the mouse (or vice versa) till 4 or 5 in the morning. the keyboarder would deal with the general shit talking in chat, and handling 1-4 on the keyboard (pots on your belt). we'd always die because rather than divvying pots, we'd run around with 'i just raped you in the ear with my god damned swordLOL' or something equally intellectual already pre-typed, just waiting to hit enter 'after we killed someone, but before they exited the game'.


good times.

 

[Atlass]

As far as DAoC being an EQ clone -- ARE YOU KIDDING?
EQ PvE beat DAoCs by a long shot. EQ "PvP" -- what a joke -- didn't compare to DAoC. Wait till Warhammer online comes out. It looks great so far, if it stays on the right track you'll see a huge following move to that MMO and not just PvPers (designed by Mythic, who made DAoC if you weren't aware).

I dont remember Sullon Zek, wierd

There was Talon and Valon Zek on EQ -- The night Talon came out it was so populated they brouht up Valon the next night or soon after.
There were 3 sides devided by race (evils vs shorties vs humanish types) and all the PK rules applied. They were eventually merged. Think they ALL merged under Ralos now?


Nothing is more hardcore than oldschool UO.

You could spend a month or more savnig up for a house, or months for a castle, and a mere thief could steal it in town, get guard-whacked, and his buddy could loot the key from your corpse.

You could be slaughtered 2 yards from town whilst trying to kill rabbits.

Safe? Never. Thought you were tough? Never. The only safety was in numbers and never being AFK.

 

[Frybread]

Thanks, keep em comin!

The point of the article is to find out how likely it would be for a hardcore WoW server to appear by looking at the success (or more likely, failure) of past game's "hardcore" servers.

 

[Eaglie]

There was Talon and Valon Zek on EQ -- The night Talon came out it was so populated they brouht up Valon the next night or soon after.
There were 3 sides devided by race (evils vs shorties vs humanish types) and all the PK rules applied. They were eventually merged. Think they ALL merged under Ralos now?

Actually, there were four sides on Tallon and Vallon. Evil (Ogres, Dark Elves, Trolls, and Iksar) vs. Short (Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling) vs. Human (Barbarian, Human, Erudite) vs. Elf (Wood, High, Half Elves). They through the Vah Shir on the Human side after Luclin, and eventually, they merged with Rallos and Sullon into Zek.

 

[Lesson25]

I'm afraid this is the only thing I am able to contribute:

Dawn, by Glitchless LLC (http://www.glitchless.com)
Launched: Well, never. The beta was announced for Q2 2001. Come Q2 2001 the developer announced the beta wasn't quite ready but released a small web-game (Race-War Kingdoms) to preoccupy gamers in the meanwhile. Five years later & several patches to RWK later, & there's been no further talk about Dawn.
Why? Back in the day, there weren't many MMORPGs on the market & those that existed all had similar mechanisms. This small software company got the idea to make something revolutionary--a "lifelike" MMORPG. No pre-constructed buildings (players would make their own cities), no character-generation (all characters were to be "birthed" from a mother & father played by real players, & that would determine their race), & no respawning (permanent-death).
The Special Rules: Mobs/NPCs wouldn't normally "kill" you, they would just beat you pretty good & maybe even capture you. Also, non-lethal attacks could be used to subdue PCs/NPCs & involunteerly imprison them (assuming you had built a prison) to allow players to employ non-capital punishments.
What Was It Like: Well, it all looked very good on paper, & received some nice appraise from game-hobbiests & game-journalists alike. There were some nice articles written & some pretty gameplay cinematics released. That whole pesky failure-to-launch problem though ended up hurting them really bad. The general speculation was that they simply bit off more than they could chew; that the developer was small time & underestimated the operations involved & resources necessary. No reason was ever publically announced, however; in fact, I don't think the project was ever even officially cancelled.
Why I Even Bring It Up: Even though it didn't go live, it's the first MMORPGs (that I know of) to conceptualize "hardcore". Also...it was the first peice of vapor-ware I ever fell for, hook/line/sinker, so it will always have a special place in my heart. I still remember eagerly signing up for the Beta & anxiously checking the website every week to see if there were any new (non-RWK) developments. I've grown a little less guillible over the years...but not much. (I'm still waiting for SC:Ghost, Blizzard!)

 

[The Squealing Fairy]

I'm afraid this is the only thing I am able to contribute:

Dawn, by Glitchless LLC (http://www.glitchless.com)
Launched: Well, never. The beta was announced for Q2 2001. Come Q2 2001 the developer announced the beta wasn't quite ready but released a small web-game (Race-War Kingdoms) to preoccupy gamers in the meanwhile. Five years later & several patches to RWK later, & there's been no further talk about Dawn.
Why? Back in the day, there weren't many MMORPGs on the market & those that existed all had similar mechanisms. This small software company got the idea to make something revolutionary--a "lifelike" MMORPG. No pre-constructed buildings (players would make their own cities), no character-generation (all characters were to be "birthed" from a mother & father played by real players, & that would determine their race), & no respawning (permanent-death).
The Special Rules: Mobs/NPCs wouldn't normally "kill" you, they would just beat you pretty good & maybe even capture you. Also, non-lethal attacks could be used to subdue PCs/NPCs & involunteerly imprison them (assuming you had built a prison) to allow players to employ non-capital punishments.
What Was It Like: Well, it all looked very good on paper, & received some nice appraise from game-hobbiests & game-journalists alike. There were some nice articles written & some pretty gameplay cinematics released. That whole pesky failure-to-launch problem though ended up hurting them really bad. The general speculation was that they simply bit off more than they could chew; that the developer was small time & underestimated the operations involved & resources necessary. No reason was ever publically announced, however; in fact, I don't think the project was ever even officially cancelled.
Why I Even Bring It Up: Even though it didn't go live, it's the first MMORPGs (that I know of) to conceptualize "hardcore". Also...it was the first peice of vapor-ware I ever fell for, hook/line/sinker, so it will always have a special place in my heart. I still remember eagerly signing up for the Beta & anxiously checking the website every week to see if there were any new (non-RWK) developments. I've grown a little less guillible over the years...but not much. (I'm still waiting for SC:Ghost, Blizzard!)

That was the first one that I fell for too. I remember when Scott Jennings a/k/a Lum The Mad interviewed him. I wonder if the interview is floating around on the net still. It's definitely a good read.

 

[Frybread]

Tallon & Vallon Zek weren't billed as "hardcore", they were just "race war" servers.

The developers got the idea after watching Rallos Zek and seeing all of the trolls, dark elves and ogres team up against the other races.

They thought it would be a good idea to force the players into teams. (it wasn't)

 

[Atlass]

It wasn't a bad idea, there just wasn't enough diversity in the races. I think for the most part, everyone ganged up on the evils anyway on those servers.

 

[Frybread]

One thing I've noticed with "hardcore" Everquest servers is that when they are released, they are the most popular. After a few months, they drop to the bottom of the list.

Can anyone think of any other examples?

 

[Lesson25]

One thing I've noticed with "hardcore" Everquest servers is that when they are released, they are the most popular. After a few months, they drop to the bottom of the list.

Yeah, but isn't that first part of the pattern true of pretty much _every_ new server, regardless of type-of-server or even game?

 

[Frybread]

Yeah, but isn't that first part of the pattern true of pretty much _every_ new server, regardless of type-of-server or even game?

Yeah, to a degree. Everyone likes a fresh start. But I haven't seen it happen to the same degree with normal servers. For example, when Tallon Zek (for Everquest) was released so many people wanted to play that they had to shut it down and open a 2nd server (vallon zek) to handle the load. That never happened with a normal new server.

Also, these hardcore servers would drop to the very bottom of the population list after a few months, while a normal server would fall to the middle, or lower-middle at worst.

 

[unbeliever]

DaoC free for all, wow, that takes me back some.

Ah, the memories of fun DAoC gankage!


And some more fun, SUN was a brutal PK guild in DAoC


Original hardcore server name was Mordred, the other hardcore servers were also known as Mordred servers (though they had different names I can’t remember)

Special rules: players can create characters in any of the three realms, and all three realms can communicate with each other and play together in PvE. (the three realms were segregated on normal servers)

PvP was free for all with the exception of guildmates. The only safe zones were the three main cities and starting areas for characters upto level 10.

The fun part was the RvR, that was completely gone with the original PvP rules completely shredded on a Mordred server. Instead relics would be fought over by various guilds, ownership of the keep was given to whoever owned the server.

Just a few other things I remember from DaoC pvp, there was no level limit, got xp and cash for coin (unless the person had recently died many times) and each death gave a con penalty which made large scale fights thankfully come to an end reasonably soon.

Oh yeah, corpse camping wasn’t really possible in DaoC, which was in my mind really well done.

IMO hardcore servers worked well within DaoC, but then again, that game was designed from the ground up with PvP in mind, most other games, including WoW, PvP is more of an afterthought.

The main issues you face when you open up a hardcore server is the changes you need to make in your Customer Service. Lots of playstyles and griefing that’s considered abuse and harassment on other server types are ignored, naming policy is more lax etc.

That being said, hardcore servers will generate a lot more complaints that GM’s need to wade threw, most of which don’t warrant a GM ticket to begin with.

Add to this the potential bad publicity. Just think of how people now bitch about gankage on WoW PvP servers, even those who think themselves hardcore become carebears on free for all servers.

Then of course you got the completly unbalanced interrealm classes in terms of PvP.

Over time, the population will always whittle down, griefers will never stay long on a PvP server, they relish in easy fodder, and that’s of short supply on a hardcore server. The people who tend to survive on hardcore servers are those that are completely jaded and couldn’t give a hoot about being repetitively ganked, it also helps to be in a guild that has a lot of vindictive bastards.

Starting up on a hardcore server that isn't fresh is very discouraging to most, Blizzards best bet is to open two differant hardcore server sets, one that is locked, and one that will allow for character transfers on and off once the economy gets kickstarted. That being said, I wouldn't expect to see a WoW hardcore server till around the the second expansion.

 

[Frybread]

OK, final list of questions:

How many PvP servers were launched, and which was the most difficult?

When was the server launched?

How was it hyped, as "hardcore", giving in to player demands, experimental or what?

What were the rules that made it different from other servers?

What was the population like at the beginning, compared to normal servers?

How did that population level change over time, if at all?

Was cheating a major problem?

Did you have fun on the server? Do you think other people had fun?

 

[WeEatDeadPeople]

Nothing is more hardcore than oldschool UO.[/B]

No way.


Adversary: Early 90's

Full pvp. Some areas were 'safe' in that some you could lock yourself in and hope for the best. When you were killed. You were dead thats it. all your items dropped to the ground the end, so sorry so sad too bad.

Medievia: Mid 90s?

Few things to start this off. MUD combat goes pretty quick. You can backstab someone to death reasonably successfully. Also theres none of this auto-balancing horseshit. People would roll in groups of 20 and own zones for months straight.

Theres no fucking magic see invis for rogues, sneaking means you cant even see someone enter or exit, and the spells actually did shit. I gues sit resembles uo more than others.

Chaotic Playerkill zones. When you died in CPK, your corpse stayed there and people could loot your items as much as they wanted. It took maybe 30 seconds to loot an item, but you could loot EVERYTHING if you had enough time. Main diff between this and UO is that its much more "high magic" and items were a huge part of it.

That said, the best moment in uo ever for me was when I robbed an entire castle blind and they closed up shop and all left the server the next day.

 

[WeEatDeadPeople]

How many PvP servers were launched, and which was the most difficult?

1 ... By and large MUD pvp has been as lame as WoW pvp ie no real point to it.

When was the server launched?

1995 as far as I can tell

How was it hyped, as “hardcore”, giving in to player demands, experimental or what?

Didnt really get hyped. thats just how it was and if you didnt like it oh well.

What were the rules that made it different from other servers?

Item loot, permanent area capture, etc

What was the population like at the beginning, compared to normal servers?
big then, bigger now. Has about 500+ people on still, all the time, 10 years later.


How did that population level change over time, if at all?

Got larger.

Was cheating a major problem?

No. Scripting is not illegal. Automated botting is but that just gets you XP

Did you have fun on the server? Do you think other people had fu
n?

Yeap!

 

[Mordiceius]

Muds. God it's been forever since I seriously played one. I was on a BIG MUD binge in the late 90s/early 00's. I remember the rule with one MUD used to be you couldn't attack anyone with less than 10x your xp or something like that. But also, you could choose the 'hardcore' mode that hid your rank so no one knew how powerful you were, but anyone could attack you at any time.

*sigh* Almost makes me want to go back to MUDs.... Almost.

 

[WeEatDeadPeople]

At work , I currently play at dsl-mud.org port 4000, and medievia. the dsl one is interesting. Its no holds barred guild on guild action, with like, non retarted pvp rp. In that like, OMG I WANT SOME ELVEN BREAD LOL! but like, just that people actually give a shit about their team and are working to own the crap out of others. Hard to explain what I mean, but like all the goblins orcs ogres will get together and have a bigass raid sumwhar.

That said , the lack of graphics etc keeps me at reasonably short intervals. Fun now and then tho.

 

[Mordiceius]

yeah my work has all ports blocked so i can't MUD at work :-(

 

[mven]

I would say the most hardcore server in any game I have ever played was EQ: Discord. I don't think anything could really compete with permadeath EQ... Maybe permadeath Lineage 2?

Sullon Zek was pretty hardcore with the way EXP loss was originally. Basically when you killed someone they had a corpse with all of their items on it which you could loot for gold and a token. If they didn't pick up anything on the way back to their corpse and died naked they would end up with a corpse that just had a token on it. If you looted the token I believe the corpse would poof and they would take full exp death (i.e. couldn't be resed). I knew a guy from my blue server who had a 59ish bard when the server was fairly new, who left his char logged on upping instrument skills while he slept, and folks from another team found him and killed his ass down to 54 before he woke up or got kicked offline. 5 levels in EQ back then on a brand new server was pretty fucking painful. Also the no rules aspect of sullon that allowed players to train the hell out of each other as a valid PvP tactic was pretty amusing. I think they left that in simply to reduce the number of issues they had to deal with from people whining about getting killed unfairly.

AC1: Darktide was pretty popular and the little bit I played on there was pretty damned entertaining. AC1 had actual projectiles and missile spells that you could dodge. So drain spells which weren't missile based and sucked a percentage of health off of people got really popular. It gave combat a sort of FPS feel and lead to things like glide casting and lots of bandaging in combat. You dropped a few items when dying and incurred exp debt. This game was a bit different from EQ PvP as you actually started to have rudimentary politics with regard to who owned which parts of the world etc. I believe AC2 also had a Darktide server.

Shadowbane aside from being quite possibly the worst performing/looking MMO ever did have some amusing things. It was the first 3D mmo (discounting MUDs and UO which I never really played much) I played that had a real thief class. The initial game had some amusing politics at least on my server (mourning). If you were in a smaller guild you had to watch who you offended etc, if you got caught poaching runes from a named mob on some larger guilds land you could get your guild in a world of shit. On my server there was a huge guild that controlled the best levelling spots initially and were being general dicks and then practically every other guild on the server banded together and burned their shit down. I think now it's pretty much a huge zerg clusterfuck from what I have heard anyway. They never really had a "hardcore" server as all of their servers were pretty hardcore though they did release a "team" based server a while back.

DAoC had 2 "hardcore" servers from what I remember. Mordred and Andred. I quit playing DAoC shortly after they were released so I didn't get much play there. I never liked DAoCs PvP much. The concepts were decent but the actual combat kinda sucked. I thought EQ PvP was much better when you actually had a fairly decent gear balance between groups (of course this wasn't always the case).

I think those are the only MMOs I've played with a "hardcore" ruleset. I think if WoW would have a hard time ever being "hardcore" as so much of the game is instanced. WoW needs some oldschool dungeons that everyone has to share where PvP is rampant. *shrug*