alts
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Chauffered Chopper heirloom mount coming in patch 6.1
Sure, with heirlooms you can deck your alts out in great gear and make the leveling process a lot easier. But what about getting around? Your mounts may be shared across all of your characters, but you still can't ride those mounts when you get started -- which leaves your new alt stuck running around the world. How undignified! Enter the Chauffered Chopper, which is currently on the patch 6.1 test realm. Like the name implies, this is a motorcycle-style mount with a driver (currently orc Koak Hoburn, likely a nod to Driving Miss Daisy chauffeur Hoke Colburn). Having your own chauffeur means that you can ride around in this chopper at any level, making it a must-have for alt-a-holics on the move. You can pick up your own by nabbing the Heirloom Hoarder achievement for collecting 35 heirlooms. The mount isn't currently working on the PTR, so it appears to be a work in progress. Also, it's more than a little odd to have an orc chauffeur for a distinctly alliance-styled mount, so we wonder if its look might be changing before it goes live. We'll keep an eye on the PTR for more info when it's there!
Player gets 100 characters at level 100
No, this feat isn't impossible. A WoW-player named Watola has managed to level 100 characters up to level 100, which has a nice symmetry to it. Watola started work on this project towards the end of Mists, working with two accounts (each account is limited to 50 characters, so this is a must) to level two characters at once with Recruit-a-Friend bonuses. Always leveling with one tank meant getting into dungeons and clearing them, even solo, was easy XP. Getting to 85 in this way took Watola 5-8 hours, depending on the class -- likely taking advantage of rested XP (easy to gain when leveling so many alts) and heirloom bonuses. At 85, an alt would be paired with a max-level hunter to farm Pandaria elites, which, if they were tagged by the alt before being killed by the hunter, the alt would get full experience for. This would earn a level every 20 or 30 minutes with full rested, and Watola would cycle through rested alts to maximize XP gain. At 90, Watola took his army of alts to Timeless Isle, gearing them up to an average ilvl of 507 to be ready for questing in Warlords.
The Daily Grind: Do you make use of mule characters?
If you go to any bank in World of Warcraft, you're going to see two different kinds of characters: actual players bedecked in fine combat gear... and level 1 bank mules with cute names and even cuter guild tags. These characters are often seen as worse than alts; they're not merely alternatives to someone's main character but characters who exist solely to hold extra gear or sell items on an auction hall, usually circumventing the intended inventory limits system. In short, they're real characters' pack mules. In some games, especially early sandboxes, such mules were loaded down with tradeskills to allow a single player to craft items for his real character, allowing him to circumvent intended character interdependency too and seriously impacting player-driven economies. Do you make use of mules or bank alts in your MMO of choice? Or has your MMO found a clever way to make muling unnecessary? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Breakfast Topic: Are you a one toon kind of player?
I struggle with alts more than anyone I know. I have my main--my beloved druid--and she has been my One True WoW Toon since I created her in 2007. Over the years I have tried and tried again to get a second toon to max, but it just hasn't happened. This time around I'm pretty close; I have a paladin at 86 and a mage at 83, so the race is on. Will I make another one to 90 before WoD drops? With the rate it's going, if I don't, I should probably be ashamed of myself. And before you ask--no, I haven't pre-ordered, so the boost isn't an option (yet). Here's the thing, though. As much as I've always wistfully dreamed of an army of crafters to make obtaining raid items just that much less expensive, part of me always feels like I'm kind of missing out when I'm not on my main. There's still plenty of things I have yet to achieve with her, don't you know! But alas, I can't get that Double Agent or Dynamic Duo achievement with just one! How about you? Do you have an army of alts at your fingertips, or are you a one toon devotee, like myself?
The Daily Grind: Does your first character end up as your main?
I made six characters during yesterday's Elder Scrolls Online headstart. The saddest part of that isn't my altitis but the fact that I still don't know which of them is going to be my main! I began with a Redguard Sorcerer, decided he didn't fit the lore well enough for my liking, and switched to an Orc Dragonknight. I got a little bored with him and made a Bosmer Nightblade and so on and so forth. I may end up going back to the Sorc after all, but I just don't know yet. What about you, Massively readers? Does your first character usually end up as your main? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
How to keep leveling when you're just tired of the same old quests
By now, most of us have leveled alts, and probably a lot of them. And while the leveling game was probably fun the first time and even the second, by the third, fourth, fifth and beyond, you're probably painfully bored of doing the same quests again. And again. And again. Sure, there are all sorts of tricks you can use to speed up your leveling, but what do you do when you just can't stand to quest through the same zone again? That's when you turn to alternative leveling methods. These aren't the fastest or the most efficient ways to get to max level, but they do all have the advantage of not being the same old quest grind. So whether you're leveling a character up for the first time or the hundredth, here are our 6 favorite alternative ways to get the XP you need.
Breakfast Topic: How many characters do you have?
Some players are focused on advancing and perfecting a single character. But others can't resist the lure of trying out other classes, races, and even factions for a change of pace. Some players could be certified professional alt-a-holics, with level 90s of each class. Today's question is simple: how many WoW characters do you have? Of course, a true alt-a-holic knows the real answer goes further than that. How many characters do you actively play? How many characters do you have at max level? And just how do you make time for them all? So, tell us readers -- in as much or as little detail as you'd like -- just how many characters do you have?
Breakfast Topic: How do you relax in WoW?
Many, if not most, of us have certainly at one point or another taken breaks from playing WoW, in which we stop playing for a few weeks, or months, or even years, before coming back. But what do we do when we need a break, but don't want to stop playing the game? Maybe you just can't stomach going back to that one raid yet again, or the thought of setting foot in one more battleground makes you want to put your face on your keyboard and moan. Yet the call of the login screen still remains, just not for whatever you had been doing. The great thing about WoW is the variety of play options, so there's nearly always something enjoyable to pick up. You could farm for those rare mounts you never got, go back for a questing or archaeology achievement. There's pets to collect and battle, recipe lists to complete, achievements to finish up, proving grounds to master, and even your Tiller's farm to manage. In Warlords of Draenor, we're going to get a whole garrison to ourselves to deck out, as well. Personally, I find mountains of giant vegetables to be my zen in World of Warcraft. What about you? What relaxes you in this game?
Will Warlords of Draenor be alt-friendly?
Here's a bit of truth - while I have a lot of alt warriors, I don't play them much once I get them to max level. I have my main, who raids, whose gear I keep up to date and who I play often, who I indulge my transmog jones on - and everyone else, once I get them to max level and maybe get them some Timeless Isle gear, I stop. My most recent 90 warrior, a draenei woman, I kept up for a month before I finally just stopped wanting to run dungeons on her. My tauren has seen even less play. Why? Is it just that I already have the one warrior, so why play others? No. Because even if that were the case, it doesn't explain why my shaman and my DK are both sitting there, doing nothing. My shaman makes potions and flasks for me, and that's about it. My DK is literally gathering dust. So, why then? Why am I not playing my alts? I thought about it this week while considering what to do with yet another Timeless Isle piece I could send to my tauren, and then I realized that he's off on another server, with no gold to speak of, and in order to get that piece gemmed and enchanted properly I'd have to play him for an hour or two to make the gold to do it - and it hit me. I already maintain my main's gear - doing the same work on my alts just doesn't appeal to me. Having to get all their gear gemmed, all the enchants (I always forget boot enchants until I realize I'm slower than everyone else) - even when you can afford it (which I can for my alts on my main's server) it's just tedious, especially when you find yourself improving gear frequently. What enchants do I put on my shaman's blue weapons? Do I go for the good enchants and then replace them in two days when I get an LFR drop? Ultimately this is what has me thinking about Warlords of Draenor. Gear has been and always will be an impediment to playing an alt - you have to be willing to put in the work to acquire new gear and get them up to the same level as your main if you intend to use them in that fashion. But the removal of the variety of enchants and gems we have now will mean there's less impediment to alt-playing.
The Daily Grind: Do you roll alts when you don't need to?
One of my favorite things about Final Fantasy XIV is the flexible class system which basically eliminates the need to roll an alternate character. Usually alts exist to provide access to different classes and associated gameplay tropes, but in FFXIV that's not necessary. I mean, sure you can roll an alt if you want to, the game allows multiple slots per account, but why bother when one character can literally be every adventuring, crafting, or gathering class and swap between them all at will? This isn't a new idea, of course, since skill-based games like Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and others featured a variation on this design theme over a decade ago. It feels fresh, though, because the vast majority of modern MMOs force players to accept unchangeable classes shortly after character creation. And maybe that conditioning is why I'm sorta having a hard time when it comes to roleplaying in FFXIV. Mechanically, I much prefer the game's flexibility to the rigidity of most themeparks. When it comes to creating a believable backstory, though, it's very easy to end up with a Mary Sue since your character can literally be good at everything. So, yeah, I rolled an alt. How about you, Massively readers? Do you roll alts even when you don't need to? Why? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The toon juggle
I have a confession to make. I have played WoW since late 2006, and I have yet to get a second toon to max level, in any expansion. I'm not entirely sure what's made this nearly impossible for me -- I've certainly had multiple toons since the very beginning, but never took another one to max after I hit 70 on my night elf druid. Then I never took one to 80. Then 85. And now 90. I have a few that are getting close, a paladin around level 83 or 84 right now, and a mage that has been steadily climbing over the last couple months and is now level 53. I would love to have a small army of alts. I dream wistfully of a self-sustaining pack of toons, who can farm and craft each other what they need without me ever having to drop 500 gold on a stupid gem ever again. Of course, even if I play madly until the next expansion comes out, I probably won't quite have that setup, but I feel like it's a reasonable long-term goal. Hopefully I'll achieve it within my next seven years of playing WoW, though.
How easy should it be to gear an alt?
That's been the question this expansion, ranging from "The daily quest rep faction grinds lock gear away, I can't get it fast enough" to "The Timeless Isle makes it too easy to gear up my alt" and I'm not sure where I fall, but the EU forums had an interesting discussion on the issue this week. CM Takralus weighed in with an opinion as well, and it's one I figured we could chat about. Takralus - Way too easy to gear up alts now I dinged a fresh 90 on Monday, and yes I went straight to the Timeless Isle. However, in questing greens & blues, I had a very hard time. Also, I still have to go through all the old raids in LFR to unlock the latest content, not to mention get my item level high enough to enter. I've picked up a few purples on the Timeless Isle, but I'm still nowhere near high enough yet to enter SoO LFR. Sure, if you go for it really hard and prepare with crafted goods, Valor gear etc. I'm sure it can be done. But that's why the system's good IMO, if you put in the effort you can be caught up quickly, if you're more of a casual player like me it's going to take a while, and I'm fine with that personally. I much prefer this to the alternative-getting my alt to level 90 then having to go through the exact same content I spent months on with my other characters. source This is hardly new to Mists of Pandaria - we've been walking a balance on gearing up alts forever, with some expansions (Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King) having a see saw between difficulties similar to the one Mists is now showing. It was much easier to level an alt in Wrath than it was at the beginning of the expansion, as the improved Dungeon Finder debuted and multiple tiers of heroic dungeons were released with better gear in each. Without new five mans in Mists, we've seen LFR and Heroic Scenarios trying to do the work that dungeons did in Wrath and Cata to an extent, and now the Timeless Isle has made that process much easier. For myself, I'm actually running the Timeless Isle on my main, whose rotation I have down cold and who I know backwards and forwards, for gear to send to my shaman alt, who has been neglected this expansion. Since I can send any mail drops and any cloaks and rings his way, boosting his iLevel while not even playing him has become possible, and I'm not sure how I feel about that - I was very fond of it at first, until I realized I'm not getting any practice in on how to make his rotation work, and that's a big counter-intuitive to me considering it's always been Blizzard's stance that you should have to play a character to get it geared. So how about you? Are you gearing up your alts via the Timeless Isle? Do you have to catch yourself from calling it the Timless Isle, as if its major characteristic was its lack of Tims? Where are all the Tims? Sorry, digression. What are your feelings about the ease of gearing this patch?
Breakfast Topic: What inspired you to level your alt?
As I've mentioned once or twice in past articles, my main WoW project over the past months has been my brewmaster monk alt. He's turned out to be a lot of fun to play and a good reminder of how much fun tanking can be, but that's not the point of this article. The point is his heirlooms. I was pretty excited when I heard that patch 5.4 would bring with it the ability to put high level enchants on low level items, including heirlooms, even if said enchants would be scaled to level. I figured it would make those last few levels pretty fun if my swords had Windsong on them, if nothing else. But my monk's coming along quicker than I anticipated. He's already in the low 80s, so chances are by the time patch 5.4 comes out, those heirlooms will be gathering dust in his bank while he's grinding scenarios and heroic dungeons. But I really want to try out high level enchanted heirlooms, so I may just do the unthinkable and level a rogue.
Storyboard: Brother from the same mother
An awful lot of characters seem to be only-children. In some countries this is pretty normal, but it's certainly not normal where I'm living. Pretty much all of my friends and contemporaries have at least one sibling. So it seems a bit odd that your roleplaying characters don't have any fellow family members to talk to. The realistic reason, of course, is that most of us don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about those siblings. And in some cases it's entirely reasonable to say that your character might not know her several half-siblings. But in the interests of verisimilitude, it's worth thinking about this, even if you never want siblings to become a major focus of roleplaying. You can come at this topic from two angles. You can talk about how to handle siblings, or you can talk about the impact of siblings. For this column, I'm going to focus on the former. What are the options for including your character's siblings?
Player packs entire WoW account with level 85+ characters
Ever wondered what it must be like to level every last character slot on your character select screen to the level cap? It's not unthinkable for players who enjoy devoting a lot of time and energy to the game, but it's not exactly a project most players have the mental stamina to grind through. Shiver in fear, then, as we bring you the story of a man who's leveled characters to 85+ not only for an entire realm or even two but in every possible slot of his WoW account. That's five realms: two with 11 characters, two with 10 characters, and one with eight, hitting the hard cap of 50 characters on a single account, all told. And that's just the Cataclysm-era installment of this altaholic's leveling efforts. Bluemain of Darkspear (EU-Alliance) is still ticking along. That's right: This herd of 85s is still leveling. Since we began our interview process, Blue's replaced and scooted a couple of characters here and there, but they're all 85 again as of this week, and he's working on his 19th level 90 character. Could this guy be the prototype for Insane in the Membrane?
The Road to Mordor: Three ways LotRO could encourge rerolls
You're either an altoholic or you're not, and if you're not, then you're probably not too concerned about what your next journey will look like. For those of us who love to fill up our character screens to the max and have rarely gone a week without thinking of sampling a new class, race, or approach we haven't tried before, then a game that provides excellent reasons to do so is essential to our long-term interest. I've made many a new alt in Lord of the Rings Online over the years, and some of those alts even survived the reality show-like elimination process to make it to high levels. Well, at least until Moria, after which the Balrog probably got them. In 2013 alone I've made good attempts at three alts, the highest of which is level 51. However, my enthusiasm for alting in LotRO is on the wane. I feel as though I've seen and done everything in those low levels to death, and Turbine isn't giving me good enough reasons to go back through it again. That's unfortunate because alting extends our interest in a title and gives us something to do once we've run out of new content to devour. So here are three ways that Turbine could encourage players to reroll more often in the future.
Breakfast Topic: Gearing up your alts
Gearing up new alts -- or even just alt specs -- can be a huge nuisance requiring countless dungeon runs that you've already done plenty of times to gear up your main. Blizzard is, perhaps, working to make this a bit easier with the Timeless Isle, which offers a number of bind on account epics that could be just the thing for making gearing a lot less of a headache. But can our alts wait for 5.4? In my case, yes, they can, because I'm too easily distracted to have gotten any of them to max level lately. But your alts could be a different story -- and certainly plenty of people (even me!) have had max level alts in the past. So tell us, readers: how have you gone about gearing up your alts? (Or do you even bother with the hassle?) Is the Timeless loot on Timeless Isle going to help get your alts or alt specs into gear?
Breakfast Topic: Your favorite alt(s)
Sure, we all have our main character on whom we lavish both time and attention. We take the utmost care to gear them up: reforging, enchanting, gemming, and transmogrifing every piece of equipment to perfection. We read forums and class blogs and make sure we're up to date on the latest gameplay techniques and boss strategies to make the most of our beloved main when we're playing. But sometimes? Sometimes you just want a break from all of that. Sometimes you want to play an alt, running through uncharted territory with an unfamiliar class. This, of course, is the draw of the alt. And for some of us, one isn't even enough. So tell us, readers: what's your favorite alt getaway? A specific character, faction, or class? Or is it just anything different, for a change of pace?
The Daily Grind: Do you ever roll two of the same class?
Every once in a while I'll hear from a friend that he or she has rolled a new character in an MMO. This by itself is not strange nor unusual, but what is weird is that the new character is of the exact same class as another one that the player regularly uses. To me, this is a hard concept to wrap my head around. MMO characters take so much time to develop as it is, and part of the joy of rolling a new alt is trying a different experience. Why would someone want to play the same class again if there are others that haven't been touched yet? I'm sure they have their reasons, and I'm curious if you've done this. Do you ever roll two of the same class, and if so, why? Explain yourself! Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Breakfast Topic: Your alt woes
While some prefer focusing on one character at a time, others thrive on the variety of alts, which can make for a nice change of pace to grinding away for experience or gear on a main character. But some players have raised the playing of an alt to something of an art: altaholics who play for both the alliance and the horde and have characters of all races across all level ranges. But even if you love them, alts are not without their problems. My biggest hurdle is my strange inability to remember which character I've logged on to, and automatically using the hotkeys for my monk when I'm playing my hunter. (I try to arrange my hotkeys so they're not foreign to me whatever I'm playing, but I always stumble nevertheless.) But what about you, readers? Do you have any alt problems you're always running into? Or, better yet, alt solutions? Share!
