I personally find Normal Mode very boring. I have a few pictures of my MC HC(MineCraft HardCore) world on my FaceBook page. go to my profile for a direct link.
Minecraft in general got boring. Right about the 1.8 beta update, a.k.a. the adventure update. It changed everything, it also made the game easier to survive in too. Now they are trying to make it harder but it's not there yet. I say in HardCore mode you shouldn't be able to use horses, wolves, or cats and sprinting should be slower or last for a shorter time. Then Minecraft HardCore mode would really be HardCore.