Hardcore World of Warcraft Deaths

Hardcore World of Warcraft

Hardcore World of Warcraft (HC WoW) offers Vanilla-Classic enthusiasts a fresh and challenging way to play the game. In this mode, you only have one life, and if you die, your Hardcore character is permanently lost. Inspired by similar modes in other games, this concept adds an extra layer of difficulty and aims to rekindle the excitement of exploring the game world as if it were your first time.

On these servers, everyone starts from level 1 simultaneously on a completely new server. Unlike the usual gradual release of content in fresh servers, all game phases and content will be unlocked right from the start, providing a unique experience.

More information about HC WoW can be found here.

About

The data from the Deathlog addon comes in the form of ids which can be referenced against the WoW Classic API to retrieve details. For example, a non-player character (NPC) ID of 589 corresponds to Defias Pilagers. In order to retrieve this data, you can access the API or download and join existing datasets corresponding to class IDs, map IDs, and NPC IDs.

Raw data was obtained from the Deathlog addon’s current database as of October 14, 2023. It can be retrieved in .json format.

The initial data set consists of 434,226 observations with 27 columns after combining data obtained from the API. In general, there is raw data from Deathlog, map data, player class data, and NPC (source of death) data.

There are several problematic data points. Namely, there were 163 entries where the player level was over level 60 or level 0, which is impossible. Thus, 163 of 434,226 entries were removed from the data as I believe there to be an error in the data. This leaves us with 434,063 data points.

Class Representation

Warriors represent the majority of characters dying in the hardcore game mode with a total of 81,055 warrior deaths (18.7% of all deaths) in this data set. While warriors represent the majority of hardcore deaths, compared to classic era servers where warriors disproportionately represent played classes (33.3%), the proportion of warriors dying is only 3% higher than the closest highest number of deaths (hunters, representing 15.7% of deaths).

Warriors are played at a high rate in classic era servers due to their high damage per second and availability to all races. In hardcore, however, DPS is not always favored over survivability, and warriors become especially risky to play due to being in close range. For this reason, it becomes difficult to take on more than one enemy at a time while playing solo.

Moreover, Shamans and Paladins both have a low number of deaths compared to the other classes. While this may be an indication of their ability to survive, it may also reflect the rate at which these classes are chosen, since Shamans are restricted to the Horde and Paladins are restricted to the Alliance.

Number of Deaths in Hardcore World of Warcraft
Class	Number of Deaths	Percent of Total Deaths	Percent Vanilla Class Players
	81,055	18.7	33.3
	68,293	15.7	3.8
	67,500	15.6	9.6
	61,069	14.1	14.1
	39,800	9.2	5.3
	36,521	8.4	14.9
	35,357	8.1	4.5
	28,729	6.6	5.3
	15,739	3.6	9.2
	434,063	100.0	100.0

Most deaths occur early

As depicted in the data below, a noteworthy pattern emerges: the highest frequency of fatalities arises prior to players reaching level 20, with a peak occurring around level 10 across most character classes. Several factors likely contribute to this phenomenon. Before level 20, most classes lack the crucial abilities necessary for escaping perilous situations. For instance, hunters don’t have access to their pets before reaching level 10, and mages cannot use their blink ability until approximately level 20. Additionally, player skill plays a role, as less proficient gamers are more likely to be eliminated, while those with advanced skills tend to endure longer in the game.

A gradual reduction in deaths is observed at each subsequent level, primarily because the population of surviving characters continually diminishes, with one exception: level 60. At this maximum level, players confront significantly more challenging content and spend more time at level 60 compared to, say, level 59. Consequently, this unique circumstance results in a surge of fatalities at level 60.

Nonetheless, the chart displayed above overlooks a crucial consideration, namely the significant disparities in the number of characters belonging to each class. To address this concern, I employed a normalization technique, where each class’s data was adjusted based on the total number of observations for that class across all levels. This allowed me to calculate the percentage of deaths for each class at every level. As illustrated below, when accounting for the number of observations, a consistent trend emerges across all classes. Consequently, it can be inferred that the risk level associated with playing any particular class is not significantly higher than that of another.

Zones

Of 434,063 deaths, 426,878 deaths occurred in a zone in the open world compared with only 6,547 deaths occurring in an instance (e.g., dungeon, raid). 11.4 percent of total deaths occurred in Elwynn Forest and 10.1% occurred in Westfall.

The zones with the fewest number of deaths, however, include safe zones (e.g., Darnassus) as well as high level zones. Given how few players make it to high levels as shown above, it makes sense as to why high level zones have such few deaths.

In early levelling, indeed, the zones with the highest number of deaths are starting zones, notably Elwynn Forest, Dun Morogh, and Westfall. As we have established, this trend corresponds to the total number of players; the majority of the characters die before level 20. However, what this data really portrays is the disparity between factions. Most deaths occurred in Alliance starting zones which either indicates more Alliance characters die, or there are more alliance players.

Instances

Of 434,063 total deaths in the data set, only 6,547 occurred in an instance. While this number initially surprised me, there are a few reasons for why this could be the case. Firstly, characters can only participate in each dungeon once per day. That is to say that a character can only complete, for example, The Deadmines, once per day. This alone places a cap on the number of characters that can die in an instance. Secondly, players typically enter dungeons prepared for danger and take extra precautions. To this end, it’s easy to become unexpectedly overwhelmed while in the open world due to being unprepared.

Unsurprisingly, the number of deaths occurring in the starter dungeons (The Deadmines and Ragefire Chasm) are the highest.

Death Source Types

Players can die to a variety of different sources in HC WoW. I have broken deaths down into three categories:

1. NPC: a NPC killed the player
2. PvP: another player killed the player
3. Environmental: the player was killed by environmental damage (e.g., falling, drowning)

The vast majority of deaths (>300k) occurred due to NPCs, while a considerable portion was due to PvP. Surprisingly, 25% of all deaths (110,057) were caused by PvP. A small number of deaths (~10k) occurred due to environmental damage.

Environmental Deaths

Environmental deaths represent 2.84% (12,349) deaths of the total number of deaths (434,063) in this data set. Of the 12,349 environmental deaths, the majority were due to falling (7,516; 60.9%), followed by drowning (3,162; 25.6%). A small number of deaths were due to fire (690; 5.59%), lava (681; 5.51%) and slime (7; 0.06%).

Most falling deaths occur in Teldrassil

21.5% of all deaths due to falling occurred in Teldrassil, and the majority of these deaths occurred to players level 0-10, which was most likely caused by falling off of the Aldrassil tree in Shadowglen which players must climb for several early quests and to access some class trainers. The second highest number of falling deaths occurred in Dun Morogh. I would guess that many of these deaths occurred in the mountains while attempting to skip the Wetlands walk to get to Menethil Harbour. A considerable number of deaths also occurred in the Undercity, likely in the infamous elevators, and Tirisfal Glades, likely from falling off the zeplin tower.

Base of the Aldrassil tree in Shadowglen, Teldrassil, likely site of most deaths by falling.

Most drowning deaths take place in Darkshore

27.2% of all deaths due to drowning occurred in Darkshore, and the majority of these deaths occurred to players level 10-20. A number of quests occur in Darkshore that has players enter water or explore areas around water. A considerable number of deaths also occurred in Durotar, which has players entering water towards the Southern tip of the zone, as well as Wetlands which features several quests which has players going inside ships to kill enemies and look for items.

Map of Darkshore showing the vast stretches of shoreline where many early game quests take place.

NPCs

311,152 deaths that occurred as a result of a NPC hitting the character, with a total of 2,851 unique NPCs. In the majority of cases, the player level is close to the NPC level, which makes sense being that players generally kill enemies within +/- two levels of themselves. As seen in the first figure below, the trend is fairly linear, fitted to a gamma distribution (data fit to Generalized Additive Model (GAM); formula = 'y ~ s(x, bs = "cs")). The second figure displays the deadliest NPC at each player level and the same trend can be observed for the enemies that killed the most characters at each level with the exception of Crypt Scarabs (summoned by an NPC in the Eastern Plaguelands and Scholomance; level 1) as well as Sons of Arugal, likely from level 60 players running Shadowfang Keep.

A more mysterious piece of the data is the level 60 characters being killed by Sons of Arugal in the Blasted Lands. 2,184 characters were killed by Sons of Arugal, of which 2,132 deaths occurred in the Silverpine Forest, which makes perfect sense. Only 15 deaths due to Sons of Arugal occurred in the Blasted Lands.

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