You are an executive in a large corporation.  You are good at your job.  You understand the corporate ladder, the education it requires, the sacrifices you must make to succeed.  And you are good, damn good.  You do (and did) whatever it takes to get ahead – night classes, internships with little or no pay, working late, weekends, anything to make your name and position one of the top in your company.  You have fired people for being incompetent, even when you might have personally given them a second chance.  A job in another state or country, perhaps not exactly what you really do – you signed up, gave it all.  And you flourished, succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.  You have respect, you do your job well, and you have earned your high pay and position.  Life is great.

Then you hear about something.  It takes place in Thailand, on the beach; it’s a 3 month gig.  You remember your pre-college days, when you took the summer off before school.  You spent it on that same beach in Thailand, found yourself, learned how to party, meet new people, and when your money ran out, you took the occasional odd job, to be able to stay the entire summer on that beach.  It wasn’t easy, but you were young, and memory is a funny thing.  You remember it as being the time of your life, no complications, no worries, learning, exploring, having fun!  You had the time of your life, and everything that you have done since has been built off those months you spent on that beach in Thailand. 

So this gig will take place on that magical place where life was uncomplicated and you were young and strong.  It promises a way to forget your current life, to give it all up and live life like a beach bum you were.  You can take nothing with you, you start afresh.  Even though you have worked hard (damn hard) to better yourself, to rise to the top in your field, in your corporation, you jump at the chance.  How simple life was then, how simple life will be now.  If only for a short while.

And it seemed fine. At least at first.  You have not had this much fun in years.  No responsibilities, no worries, no contact with your current life.  But none of your experience counted, none of your skills, none of those very things that you have spent years honing, improving.  Things were tough, and you found out that if you did not perform will, you would get deported from the beach, kicked off and forbidden to return. 

“We can help”, the beach managers promised.  “You cannot use your experience, but we will happily let you spend your money that you have earned.”  So you spent. And spent.  And spent some more.  You are important, a leader among leaders, have climbed the corporate ladder – surely a little spending is justified.  And a little more.  And even a bit more. 

Soon you realized that no matter what you spent, you could not equal the level that your current experience provided.  Still, it was fun. They said it was!  It had to be!

And before you knew it, the end was here.  It was time to go back to your former job, your friends, family, life.  They would understand that this was something you had to do.  And you had all the new friends you made on that beach, though many got deported and were never seen again.  But the beach list of the people that managed to remain would let all know how great you were!
You got back to your high level executive job, expecting everything to be the same.  But it wasn’t.  While you were on the beach, the rest of the Company moved on.  They continued to take the classes, the jobs, the internships that were required for advancement.  You got a colorful Power Tie from the beach, as kinda proof that you were there. Most of your colleagues either did not see it, or really did not know what it meant.   Nothing else from your stay came back with you, just memories..  When you attempt to explain, you realized that the experience only meant something on that Thailand beach, and that the rest of the world had moved on.  You are now behind the curve, have actually lost respect and importance at the Corporation that you work.  Your co-workers show little respect for you (even when you wear you Power Tie), perhaps realizing they had to pick up the slack while you were gone.

That list that showed how great you were on the beach was somewhere, but nobody back home really ever saw it.  They had their real lives to live. That was Beach Life.

You just found out that the same beach, in Thailand, is going to offer a new gig a little later this year.  And that they are gonna make it a bit tougher to stay, and even more expensive.  You wonder – was it worth it? 

Hardcore League.

Well said.  There were a number of lessons that could have been learned on how to booster sales through this little experiment.

Turbine, of course, didn't learn a single fucking one of them.

I dont get this love about this HC shit

You can do everything in the regular servers like you do in the HC shit.

It is exactly the same crrap.

Asheras wrote on Jan 19^th, 2020 at 8:18am:

That a lot of horse shit.

The reason ppl play HC is because theres less power creep.

ILoveExploits wrote on Jan 19^th, 2020 at 9:01am:


You do know that everything you can buy in the store contributes to powercreep. And to have supreme tomes and racial and universal and what not on a 1st lifer is the bomb?!

If you want less powercreep you need to close the store. Everything else in an illusion.

ILoveExploits wrote on Jan 19^th, 2020 at 9:01am:


Thanks, Captain Obvious.  Also your overly simplistic analysis is weaksauce.

The point that the poster I was quoting made was "you can avoid power creep on live, if you want".   My point was, yeah, but it's still not the same if you are the only one (or only a small group) is avoiding power creep.  Because you are both missing the point that it isn't just about less power creep.

"less power creep" at the start of the league is only one factor.  the time limit means that there is almost no value in grinding a lot of things you would normally grind.  Why grind crafting, or BtC loot, or sentients, or PL's or much of anything?   It becomes a much less grindy version of DDO as a result.    When time becomes a primary resource constraint, it alters the nature of how you spend it and what you focus on.  It is more fun because it starts with, and ends with, almost no power creep.   Unlike live where accessing more power creep (in the form of PL's and gear and such) is your primary motivation. 

Just saying "there is less power creep" is like saying the American Civil War was about slavery.  or that World War I was because of the death of Archduke Ferdinand.   

Does anyone really read what they have posted?
All the complaints about not looting the very best items, the miserable drop rate and how DDO is TOO EASY, needing the devs to make stuff harder... yet has to cheat to get stuff.  Now those same people - who could be playing permadeath on the existing servers - are saying how great the hardcore server is!

The only thing you are missing is that (FORCED) leaderboard saying how AWESOME you are.  Then, that character can be transferred back to your original server (minus some stuff). Yet, you could have already played it without waiting for that shutdown period to transfer the character.

YOU ARE AWESOME!
See? you could get that on a free board and didn't have to pay to hear that!


No one wants to be suckerpunched, but damn it if someone starts charging for it and puts a bit of lipstick on it, you all want it.

Suckerpunches $5 Wow, that was awesome, can I get another? Sure I will pay!