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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsTake the WoW Ironman Challenge
by Mathew McCurley 
Feb 7th 2012 at 12:00PM
Blizzard is no stranger to Ironman-type challenges. Both Diablo and Diablo II featured rough hard modes that would cripple those who were not the best. Frankly, the fact that there are players out there putting together these difficulty challenges probably makes a lot of folks over at Blizzard very happy.
Some of these Ironman Challenge rules are pretty brutal. Death is death -- if you die, delete. End of story. Better make it a PvE realm choice, if you want to curb a lot of nonsense-deaths. You aren't even allowed to use talent points, including the one to pick your specialization. No specialization is a rough road to take. If this is your kind of thing, brutal self-hatred, you're going to have a ton of fun.
Head over to the official WoW forums to check out all of the rules and FAQ. If you do decide to try the Ironman Challenge, share your progress in the thread.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
styopa Feb 14th 2012 9:12AM
It seems like a Shaman would be the natural answer to this challenge.
I mean, the point is that (IRL) if you die, you die. But shammies don't. They have a self rez as an inherent ability.
To deny them using this seems...arbitrary. To not deny it trivializes the ironman.
Noctodemus Feb 27th 2012 3:30PM
So if you were one of the early players of vanilla WoW, you'll remember that Azeroth was a pretty scary place. Death was easy to come by and sometimes you really had to think about your plan before romping into a gang of mobs and laying waste.
For me at least, the Ironman Challenge recaptures that feeling of danger, of never quite knowing if I'll make it through the next 10 minutes. And I don't seem to be alone. Last night on Nazgrel there were 20 or 30 of us all questing away and sharing our experience on guild chat - congratulating new level thresholds passed, offering condolences for deaths (of which there were many). Remember when WoW was new and everything in the game was fresh, exciting and scary? That's what it felt like.
Even quests I've done dozens of times before, starting quests that I used to blow through on autopilot, required care and planning. I rolled a nelf hunter and went after The Relics of Awakening at level 7. Even with all the Cata revisions to that quest, it was a little dicey in spots. I had to pay attention every step of the way or risk paying the ultimate price.
It was awesome.
If you're sick of cycling through endgame content to get that last piece of epic gear. If you've had enough battlegrounds to make you fall asleep in your chair. Take a run at the Ironman. And party like it's 2004.