Actually, from what they have said, hardcore should be more fun than ever. Since the new health system will eliminate the need to have a bunch of monsters that can one-hit kill, you don’t have to walk around in constant fear of a bad doll pack. You may have some harrowing moments, but isn’t that part of the fun? If you knew for sure you were 100% untouchable, what would be the point?

I don’t understand how you could jump to the conclusion that hardcore is out because life/mana leech (may) be out.

Well as I see it you could die simply by being unlucky enough not to get a health globe when you need it. In D2 you always had something in your sleeve, like potions and leech. Having to count on a drop factor for survival seems a bit too harrowing. In normal mode it doesn’t really matter since according to Jay Wilson the death penalty will be close to nothing, making the fear of death non existing. However, in hardcore, later in the game where mobs are tough (hopefully), I think it just wont work.

Imagine if there’d been hardcore in D1, and while waiting for D2 we got word that there would be MSLE bosses that could insta kill you from off the screen. Or ESFE bosses that would blow up and insta kill you within melee range. Or that healing potions wouldn’t heal you immediately, but would do so over time. We’d all have thought that meant D2 would be impossible to HC, and why would we want to with arbitrary insta kills, etc.

Players will adapt. Going by what Blizzard’s saying, I think D3 will be more suited to skillful HC play than D2, since they’re going to remove the cheesy one hit kill stuff that Jay Wilson talks about in these interviews. It might be harder for most players, since just using a huge weapon and a ton of life leech won’t be an available strategy, but the total rip off/buggy deaths that claim most D2 HC players should be minimized.