to me hardcore has always been about striving to be the best. for example: new content comes out and the hardcore players are the ones running the content first day, parsing runs, tweaking parties, and striving to beat the content first. to me the hardcore players are the ones that do the trial and error runs and are willing to work towards completing hard content. they like the challenge and always are looking for the next challenging encounter to attempt and defeat.

i don't think that doing the same content over and over like hamlets are anything near hardcore. it's just a long boring grind doing the same boring thing over and over.

in other words the groups fighting to be the first to beat ifrit, moogle, garuda, av, cc, and darkhold are the hardcore players. the ones just running those contents over and over after videos have been released showing them every step isn't.

i look at hardcore as striving to get difficult content done faster or first, but i don't consider someone running hamlets for 12 hours a day hardcore.