Blizzard has replied to some concerns about Classic Hardcore around Trading and acquiring String of Ears. Additionally, Blizzard mentions that they are considering adding in «self-found» options in a future update.
Thanks for the post Azelon. Let’s see if we can dig in with some answers: Azelon: We can start earning trophies for “String of Ears” at level 10. But 2 friends can level many alts to 10 to increase the stack count of each other’s mains. Leveling a character to 10 is easy and fast so they are “disposable”. What I think is more appropriate for the minimum level to be increased to at least 40. Once you reach that far, players won’t be engaging in Duel to the Death readily and very few people would want to loose a 40+ character just to increase someone else’s trophies. I think 40 is an important milestone in Classic because it’s then when you get your 1st mount.We’ve actually already made a quick adjustment here and raised the minimum level to earn or grant stacks of String of Ears to level 19. This should be reflected in our next PTR build sometime next week. That’s a bit more of a time investment needed than 10, so we are hoping that deters some shenanigans. We’ll watch this closely and if it becomes something that’s majorly exploited, we can make more adjustments. We have a few more ideas for future iterations already.
Azelon: Trading should be restricted to few levels below and above the character’s level. Otherwise high level characters will easily farm gear for low levels. Classic Hardcore should be about the journey from level 1 when you start with nothing and survive through all the difficulties. Later after release when there are characters from all levels chain trading should also be prevented. This Read more on wowhead.com