Provocating,
To truly be hard core... I.M.O., you need to consider a few things. EQ 1 grew in a way that left old zones behind. Just about zero reason to utilize most old zones. Then they tossed in horridly bad "newbie quest stuff"...bleh! Remember when they had the Darkened Guk etc? Then when it was over, they reverted it back to its old worthlessness... just a general example is all.
-- You might consider going back and taking a HARD look at what made original Hard Core really Work! A literal re-balance to homogenize things from "start to finish" would go tremendously far. You would not have to really all up Change a lot of stuff, so much as re-do what already is there to make it all jive together.
Remember your first time in Veeshan's Peak? How about Halls of Testing? Go back and really take a hard look from original Antonica, all the way up to the GoD content. Then really think hard about how to make it all seamless.
-+- The goal would be:
-- "Ok, day one...starting newbie in Qeynos...here we go!"
-- "Whew, level 50 Baby! YEAH!"
-- "Whew... Max level, all AA's, best gear in game...YEEE-HAAWW!!! Hmm...time to start another toon and do that again!"
Note there was not any "Ok, time to go purchase Max Expansion twink gear, because this original crap blows!". To be hardcore...that last expansion needs to FEEL like a natural progression forward, not the Herky Jerky ZOOM ZOOM that it turned out to be in original EQ. Hey, I played years and years...
For instance, Dragons Vs. Giants in Vellious was all the rage right? Suddenly it literally dead ended from one expansion to the next?!?! All that time factioning and gearing up, and Poof, NEXT!! With no proper "End Game Finish for this chapter of EQ1, Ok folks next up is...!!"
From antonica to vellious alone, there is so much that could be Re-Massaged and then expanded upon to _Finish_The_Story_ ...
Another for instance...Cats, and Drakkin were never in first 3 expansions ...obviously... this server could "expand organically" to include the Drakkin easily enough ...especially once you consider Dragons Vs. Giants.
Next... Deity. For the most part that just got 100% dropped! Some spells need to be pretty much Just Reverted to original. To add to that thought, you could have a "grey pool" that is the generic starting spells for the respective classes, then Faction choices and Deity work would generate very real differences in what players get for their personal _in_game_made_choices_for_spells_. This would make faction and deity really *Feel Real*. There would obviously be a path of "neutrality" in here, not just good and evil, because there are 3 types of deity...
What I am saying is, you could make your Hard Core server feel more real then the "real-but-current" servers by going back and re-doing the stuff that was pretty much already there.
Btw, is that Relic from Shards of Dalaya?,
Gary
Edit: Another For Instance... the Wakizashi you could quest from Mistoor, and the old Crafted Armors... pretty cool OLD quests...for OLD worthless crap gear nobody in their right minds would ever do THESE DAYS.... re-imagine and re-do things so where that these old quests are anything but old... make them real again. Some of these old quests were Really Good! My old DE Warrior (who could enter halas and train...remember shared wolf form before the nerf?) kept his Crafted and that Wakizashi, and later added a Swiftblade of Zek... heh.. was a cool look for a long time