FAQ
From Play It Hardcore
This wiki is dedicated to guides, FAQs and walkthroughs on "Hardcore" mode. That is, generally speaking, you are playing through the entire game without dying or getting a Game Over, ever.
Given the nature of just about all of these games, that can be anywhere from a bit challenging to extraordinarily difficult. However, it can also be extremely satisfying, and much more realistic. It is intended to be a challenge, and a rewarding one. If you haven't considered it before, you might give it a try on one of the easier games to complete! Hardcore gaming is only as difficult as the game it is played on, and you will almost invariably have more fun.
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Q: Why play a game on hardcore mode?
Because we enjoy a challenge. We enjoy testing our skills as a gamer against the developer's traps. We like to be able to say we did it. For us, it's fun. Sure, anyone can beat Halo on "Legendary", when they reload 50 million times. Where's the challenge in that? Now, blazing through the River of Flame on Hell Hardcore in Diablo 2, that's tough.
Q: The game I have in mind doesn't really fit this...
Yeah. There are a lot of games, especially Strategy games, where it's pretty much inevitable that some of your forces will get maimed, murdered, and blown up. A good rule of thumb is that if something causes a Game Over, that's the sort of thing you ought to be avoiding in your guide. In strategy games, it would be losing a scenario, losing all your bases, or getting your commander killed; in racing games it'd be failing to qualify for the next race, in simulation games it'd be going bankrupt. So on and so forth. In this way, YES, you CAN put Master of Orion, Need for Speed, SimCity, and the like on this site. We'd love them! Just don't blindly lead your readers into almost certain disaster and be as clear and complete as you know how with your writing, and you'll do a great job.
Q: I saw a term I'm not familiar with. Is there a glossary?
Yep. See the Hardcore Glossary for specifics. We try to avoid inventing new words, though, and we appreciate it if you avoid it in your work here, too.
Q: What the hell is this ratings system?
The ratings are a tongue-in-cheek way of communicating how difficult a game will be to complete. Don't get preoccupied over "WTF why is X above Y?!?"; everything's meant to be a dry laugh. See the Difficulty Ratings article for more details and specifics on what each rating means.
Q: How are the guides administrated?
Each guide has a primary contributor; the person who has done the most work on it. Typically, this is the person who has started the guide. However, if a contributor disappears for months and someone else shows up to finish the guide, it can change. The primary contributor has the final say on what is and isn't appropriate for the guide. A sysop may, in extreme cases, override them, but this is restricted to times when the primary contributor is stifling helpful information or suggesting a terrible route. Do not undo or otherwise molest the postings of the primary contributors--doing so is a bannable offense. If you disagree with the primary contributor, discuss it on their Talk page or the PIH forum. You may, however, put your opinion at the bottom of the main guide as a disputing opinion.
Q: Is there any legal mumbo jumbo I should know about?
This is the internet, so obviously we can't just have gentlemen's agreements about this wiki forever. Inevitably, someone is going to get pissed off and do something stupid to annoy us unless we lay down some ground rules. So, as a pre-emptive strike against stupid crap, PIH subscribes to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license with regards to our dealings with external sites for the FAQ/General Reference Material ONLY. Walkthroughs are not to be reproduced anywhere. This is more due to the fact that walkthroughs are split up for easier reading and are optimized for a wiki format than anything else. It's important to protect the quality of our work, so letting someone butcher it by squishing all of our stuff together and removing any pictures and movies we have supporting it...no, just no. Also, due to the public nature of the site, if you want to build on a guide, please just do it on PIH. Note that the prohibition against derivative works does not apply in the case of out-of-date versions, in case there were any doubts about that. Frankly, the PIH staff is of the opinion that this is more of a 'your loss' sort of situation.
For attribution to be considered adequate, the citation must be above the point where the the copied article begins, in type at least as large as the text of the guide itself. Or, in the case of a wholly copied article uploaded as a text file on an outside site, a link noting PIH as the source next to the link to the guide is perfectly acceptable.
Example: Link to guide Source:Playithardcore.com) or put it in the header, before the actual guide starts. Also, we'd consider it neighborly if you'd notify a sysop about copying the work. Check the PlayItHardcore Staff page for a listing of them.
Further, Playithardcore.com claims the right to host any guide that has two or more contributors to it while releasing all other rights to the respective author(s). "Guide" in this context is referred to any whole documentation project. So if one person were to write reference material and one person were to write a walkthrough for a certain game, both the reference material and the walkthrough are claimed. Basically what that means is that after it becomes a community project, it stays on the community website. Try to bully us into taking it down and we'll tell you to jump in a lake.
tl;dr version: You can yoink the guides, but not walkthroughs, so long as you give us credit. The citation for the credit must be at the top of things or next to the link going to our guide. Finally, if you work with even one person on a guide--even if it's something as small as spelling corrections or proofreading input--then it's not coming off our site just because you want it off.
For any questions regarding this, please contact ThunderClaw on either his talk page or on the community forums.
