What I have in mind for rules and structure that worked well for us back then were things like this:
No Guild Airship Amenities or Guild Buffs. This removes added advantages to questing, creating a greater challenge. Having a guild is great, as it'll allow us to have much more comradery and social interactions, as well as keep better tabs on each other's progress, but having guild buffs would lower the challenge of the event. Off-ship Guild Vendors will be the only exception to this rule, as they are NPC vendors found in the game world for you to acquire potions or scrolls or other items you can utilize for questing, and they provide no major or unfair advantage.
No Daily Dice. This is to prevent added advantages as well as XP boosts.
No Iconics. Since the idea is to start at level 1, and since this is an honor system, this will prevent cheating via free level 15 gear and XP. To help with this, you can easily see what race a character is via hovering over player icons on the social panel.
No Auction House, Astral Shard Exchange, Cannith Crafting or DDO Store items. There are a few reasons for this rule. First, we are guests on Wayfinder, and thus don't want to affect their server economy. Secondly, many advantages can be had by utilizing items found outside of quests. Basically, loot what you find and use it. Part of the fun of permadeath style is to keep it feeling like you are playing pencil and paper, and having limits on what your character can use in this compacity really does help you stay creative when preparing to quest and while questing. However, permitted is the use of NPC vendors and brokers. If you find an item in this wise, it would be like your character going into town in a pencil and paper campaign to find a smith or armorer and buy a sword from them for example. Trading items within your party is also permittable.
All Quests Must Be Run At Level On Elite. This is where the real challenge begins. This is HARD CORE. You won't have guild ship buffs, and you will be running every quest at level. You won't be running quests over level. Think of this like a campaign. You do the quest once, then move on. Obviously, there are some quests that just don't work that way, like the Delera's and Thernal situation that we know of from HC, and of course The Shroud. No repeating quests. Again, the idea here is not to farm quests/items, and to keep that pencil and paper campaign feeling. So, to clarify, if you are level 1, you will be running all the level 1 quests until you are finished all the level 1 quests, before taking level 2 and doing all the level 2 quests. This means you will be running level 1 quests on Elite at level 1, or if you are level 3, you will be running all the level 3 quests on Elite at level 3. Since this isn't the official HC league, we won't have level-lock-outs when you get to that squirrely issue from HC with level 20 content (doing heroics while epic).
No Soloing. The point of this rule is to keep everyone accountable to some degree. If many of the participants in this event solo'd quests, then know one would really know if they died 12 times in a quest. We have to have some kind of accountability to prevent cheating and to keep it as fair and balanced as we can. The only exceptions to this would be the few specific quests that REQUIRE you to play it solo. Also, this event is a community event, ultimately for fun! The goal is to join a party of adventurers to seek loot and glory!
No Use of Banked Items From Other Characters/Alts. The theme of this event is to simulate a campaign style Hard Core experience. It's supposed to be a fresh start, so let it be! Don't pass items from alts or other characters of yours to your HC character. However, there is one exception to this: The Heirloom Item. The Heirloom is the inheritance item. This is the item you keep after your character dies questing. You can keep this one item of your choice and pass it on to your next character to use as their sole inheritance that was left for them in your character's last will and testament. You can only have one Heirloom item, no matter how many character deaths you experience during the event. However, you can pick a different item to be your Heirloom per life. So that Vorpal Falchion might be your first Heirloom item passed-down after your first character death. But, let's say after character death #3 you decide to make your Sword of Shadows your next Heirloom item to pass down. That is fine. Also, keep in mind that there are no free character transfers off Wayfinder after this event, so you are not farming items to move over to another server. This should help change a lot of the playing styles the players will utilize in comparison to past HC leagues.
Loot the Body!!! What? Yes, you read correctly! When your character dies, the other characters in the same party in that instanced dungeon or wilderness will be able to loot the body! The only item off-limits will be the Heirloom item. All other items on that character will be made available to be looted after the players resurrect the dead body (granting the ability to utilize trade windows). Handling this should be left up to the party, but the dead character should link any/all items to the party via party chat and let them decide on how to exactly divvy up the loot.
This could just be a democratic method, making dice rolls in party chat, or just going alphabetically. However you'd like to resolve this is up to you. You don't have to loot the body at all, but you might find this is quite a fun or memorable moment in your adventure. You might even take a moment to remember your fallen comrade with a song or prayer or just laugh or cry! One of the tricky parts about this and something that will tempt players, is trying to get a soul stone or resurrect a character that might be in quite a perilous position on the map. Will it really be worth trying to loot that body?
No Twink Gear or Items. This includes Goldseal Hirelings like Frogo and items like The Elite Spider Cultist Mask. The point of this is to level the playing field as much as possible and give everyone the same footing in playing out their adventurer in this event.
These are for sure not every idea I can come up with, but these will do for now. None of these ideas are set in stone, though, to me, some are closer to be set in stone than others. All of these ideas for rules can be tweaked and adjusted based on feedback and/or possible polling. We'll compile a finalized list before the event gets underway on July 1st. But for now, I think this will give all of you an idea of what I'm hoping for with this event. Again, nothing is final right now. These are all just ideas and a theme I am hoping to cultivate with the players seeking a hard core style community experience. I'll post the goals for this event I'm hoping for, soon.
however if anyone after this Event plans to stick-around. We do have a great lag-less server and a welcoming community to hang out with after this unofficial hardcore session.
