We’ll be nerding out about World of Warcraft and MMORPGs today, but no background knowledge is needed.

I don’t play too many online games, but ocasionally I boot up a few leading titles to see what all the fuss is about. This weekend I had some spare time and I picked up World of Warcraft Classic, a rerelease of a popular 20-year-old MMORPG. If you don’t know what WoW is, you’re probably reading this on a printout (thank you?)

World of Warcraft Classic is a different beast. You see, over the past 20 years, the game has changed with modern gaming sensibilities. Progression is faster, gear is plentiful, and grouping up is optional. In vanilla World of Warcraft it was dangerous to deal with more than one enemy at a time, and dealing with groups of mobs or elite enemies required grouping up. World of Warcraft Classic brought that back.

All the dwarves are here, and even the bears are welcome.

But it created a bit of a problem - with high difficulty and high interdependence with other players came competitiveness, and with it toxicity. WoW can and does get toxic - players often forget about empathy and don’t accept anything other than a perfect play. I mean that’s where all the popular media about WoW nerds treating the game as a job came from.

Which brings me to World of Warcraft Classic - Hardcore. I was curious to find the right experience for a casual player like myself - I looked into dad guilds (yup, those are a thing), but I kept being pointed towards Hardcore realms. Here’s the deal: hardcore WoW realms have a unique ruleset - you only get one life. If the character dies, you start from scratch. And in a grindy and slow MMORPG, that’s some high stakes.

So, how did hardcore realms end up providing a good experience for a casual player? Well, on most World of Warcraft servers, getting to the max character level is a one-and-done deal, making server population skew heavily towards high level players. This means that leveling zones are generally empty, and players who do level characters try to get through the content as fast as possible. This creates limited space for cooperation, because you need to find the right person at the right time and the right place, and heaven forbid you don’t pick the most optimal route or slow down to smell the digital roses.

Hardcore servers offer a very real risk of losing progress, which does happen often enough. Which evens out player distribution, since more people spend the time leveling their characters. And because your character only has one life, more experienced players might have a few characters going through the leveling process, as a backup.

This also slows down the game - all of a sudden it’s not about the fastest way to the highest level, but about a trade-off between safety and speed. Enough of a trade-off to push back the end goals far enough into the future and make players appreciate actually playing through much of the game’s content. Players stop by to chat, role-playing guilds are frequent.

There’s an atmosphere of camaraderie on the server. Every time anyone makes it to level 60 - a max level - a chime goes off and their name’s highlighted in a public chat. Casual guilds are plentiful, and happily share resources with the newbies. A mere set of bags can make a huge difference at early levels.

There’s the instant cooperation too. Getting attacked by more than one enemy in World of Warcraft Classic can be dangerous, and some quests take you right into the middle of enemy camps - or even worse - caves. It’s dangerous to go alone, and it’s common to quickly group up with fellow players to navigate a dangerous encounter. I’ve had lots of fleeting, positive encounters, with players sharing loot and resource nodes freely.

Everyone’s in the same boat, enjoying the perilous journey together. In a handful of hours I put into the game I slowly made my way to level 10 as a dwarf hunter, finally obtaining my pet bear - which my newbie friendly guild celebrated with lots of cheers.

Will I make it to level 60? Definitely not, that journey’s too long and dangerous for a casual player like me. Will I start from scratch if my character dies? I’m not sure. But I know I’m having a great time in a welcoming community, which goes straight into my “good gaming memories” box.