One month in, nearly 2 million World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore characters have met their maker in the permadeath spin-off of Blizzard's old-school MMORPG.

As revealed by Blizzard, precisely 1,982,716 players have been killed since the game's official Hardcore servers launched. A huge portion of that number, 401,980 to be exact, were Hunter players. Warriors, one of WoW Classic's most challenging classes to play but also one of the most rewarding, have bitten the dust 332,970 times, while Mages, the masters of crowd-control and area-of-effect attacks, have died 294,082 times. Death numbers for Paladin and Shaman are relatively small, likely because they are unique to the Alliance and Horde respectively and thus played by a smaller number of players overall. Combined, the two faction-specific hybrid classes rank below Warlock in number of deaths.

The stats can tell us a few things if we read between the lines. For starters, Hunters, Warriors, and Mages are among the game's most-played classes, which then translates into higher death totals. Hunter, in particular, is an interesting case study. Many WoW players would assume Hunter to be "easy mode" in a permadeath scenario, as they can feign death to get out of sticky situations and also have a pet that can assist with holding aggro and killing enemies. The only problem is that Hunters don't get their pet until level 10. If I had to guess, I would bet a significant portion of the over 400,000 Hunter deaths occurred prior to level 10.

One month in, nearly 2 million World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore characters have met their maker in the permadeath spin-off of Blizzard's old-school MMORPG.

As revealed by Blizzard, precisely 1,982,716 players have been killed since the game's official Hardcore servers launched. A huge portion of that number, 401,980 to be exact, were Hunter players. Warriors, one of WoW Classic's most challenging classes to play but also one of the most rewarding, have bitten the dust 332,970 times, while Mages, the masters of crowd-control and area-of-effect attacks, have died 294,082 times. Death numbers for Paladin and Shaman are relatively small, likely because they are unique to the Alliance and Horde respectively and thus played by a smaller number of players overall. Combined, the two faction-specific hybrid classes rank below Warlock in number of deaths.

The stats can tell us a few things if we read between the lines. For starters, Hunters, Warriors, and Mages are among the game's most-played classes, which then translates into higher death totals. Hunter, in particular, is an interesting case study. Many WoW players would assume Hunter to be "easy mode" in a permadeath scenario, as they can feign death to get out of sticky situations and also have a pet that can assist with holding aggro and killing enemies. The only problem is that Hunters don't get their pet until level 10. If I had to guess, I would bet a significant portion of the over 400,000 Hunter deaths occurred prior to level 10.