alts
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The alt deficiency
Do alts even count as alts when half of them are the same class as your main and the other half are rarely played? I have a troubling relationship with the concept of playing an alt. First off, I don't really get alts. I know people who have four or six or even eight level 85 characters, geared and kitted out for raiding or Arena/RBG play. One woman I know has completely filled up two servers with level 85 characters (full character window, a server she plays Horde on and a server she plays Alliance on) that can at least run a random Hour of Twilight heroic. I accept that this exists, but I can't imagine doing it. See, I'm middling at best about my achievements in game, but there are things I've done that you can't do anymore. I mean, every time I ran the 5-man Zul'Gurub, I kept thinking about how I'm a hero of the Zandalar tribe. Shouldn't they at least try and talk me out of killing them? Shouldn't I at least have the option to say, "Hey, guys, it's me, can we chill out on this?" and then we could express our sorrow at having to come to blows? I can't do that on an alt. Well, OK, I can do it on the other two warriors who are also heroes of the Zandalar tribe, but you get my point. An alt's not going to have all those titles I barely realized I was earning, or my Mimiron's Head, or a Sulfuras in the bank laughing at me every time I got to the trasmogrification ethereal and get a hit of sweet, sweet gear changery.
The Daily Grind: Are you a fan of account-wide rewards?
Guild Wars has long been a source of mild frustration for me because not all of the game's achievements are account-wide. While aspects of the Hall of Monuments are based on your account's accomplishments and skill unlocks are accessible by alts, the game nevertheless discourages me from devoting time to my secondary toons, not when there are factions and titles still to grind on my main. I'm intrigued by games that offer parallel power tracks that show your overall investment in the game, not just in one character. Lord of the Rings Online's Destiny and Star Wars: The Old Republic's Legacy systems do just that: They reward you for playing multiple characters by allotting you currency that can be spent on special rewards. So today we ask you: Are you a fan of account-wide rewards like Destiny and Legacy points? Or do you think they unduly reward scattered play rather than specialization in one character and class in the game? 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 Daily Grind: Are heirloom items bad for MMOs?
In its Wrath of the Lich King expansion, World of Warcraft introduced a new class of items: the heirloom. Heirlooms can be transferred between all of the characters on your account, even your alts belonging to "enemy" factions. While a cloth-bedecked caster can't exactly wear the heavy platemail of his older Paladin brother, the hand-me-downs are pretty useful for twinking if you plan it out a bit. The trouble is that heirlooms effectively level up with the player, so an alt who has a truckload of heirlooms has no need to take part in the player market. Why would he need to buy a crafted staff from a Weaponsmith? He's got one that he can use for 80 (85, now) levels. And in that case, why bother crafting as a lowbie Weaponsmith at all? What do you think -- do the conveniences of heirloom items outweigh their negative impact on MMO economies? 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 Daily Grind: When do you alt?
We know that some of you love to roll alts and some of you just play one character until the end time. This question is not about that. No, today we want something that's much more fundamental but yet subtly more important -- when do you make those alts? When do you click back over to character creation and start fresh? For some players, it's a matter of boredom. Some players make new characters based on roleplaying demands. Some just love to roll new characters on a regular basis whenever one character hits an important milestone. And for some of us, it's just a matter of whenever the whim strikes, whether or not that whim makes a lot of sense at the time. If you don't make alts, of course, your answer is "almost never." But if you do, we ask you -- when do you make your new characters? What motivates you to start again from the bottom on a regular basis? When is it time to make another character? 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!
Wings Over Atreia: Happy Newb Year!
Oh, that feeling when a game is new and everything is an adventure! Say what you will, but I cherish those moments of still being a newb and getting to experience things for the first time while exploring a new world (mind you, that is newb as in "new person," not n00b meaning "hopelessly moronic"). The problem is, once you have been in a game for a while, that whole aura dissipates and you lose that feeling of wonder. I envy those just now coming to Aion, as those of us who have been here for the past two plus years have lost that initial excitement. And when you've lost that newbie feeling, then it's gone, gone, gone, whoa whoa whoa... Or is it? When you have played the game for a long period of time, you tend to settle into a rut that is hard to break out of. Log in, do dailies, do arenas, do dredge. Toss in a siege. Rinse and repeat. In the past, Wings Over Atreia has delved into some of the reasons to stay in game when things become a bit monotonous and we sludge through some of the more difficult times. But why should we sludge? Why not find ways to make Aion more interesting when you hit that plateau? Some players have done just that. A little creativity (and sometimes some really insane friends) can really make a difference and bring back that newbie feeling -- or at least make things interesting while adding some variety to gaming.
Breakfast Topic: How and where do you prefer to level your alts?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. With all the improvements to the leveling process, you'd be hard pressed to find a player immune to the ill effects of altoholism. Everybody (and with the new free-until-level 20 system, probably their grandmothers too) is rolling that one class they've really, really wanted to try but were too put off by the leveling process to actually do so. In many cases, they are rolling several new alts. All those alts adds up to a lot of leveling -- far more leveling than the current content can support, even. Even after three alts, many find themselves having exhausted the zones currently available in the game. It can get stale very, very quickly. To prevent the dread condition known as burnout, alt-heavy players have to mix things up as they level -- different zones, different continents, dungeons, Battlegrounds ... Anything to break up the monotony. Personally, while there are several zones I never skip -- Zangarmarsh, Netherstorm, Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills, for instance -- I make an effort to play through the zones in a new order, hopping continents as often as possible, and never running dungeons or Battlegrounds. Sure, the story may be massively fragmented this way, but I've played through it before. I know the story; I'm there for the gaming aspects the second time through. Sure, dungeons and Battlegrounds may be fun and provide quick experience, but questing lets me go at my own speed. When you level alts, how do you navigate the zones? Do you have a select few favorites that you always level through, or do you try to forge new adventures in new zones as you make your way to 85? Or do you bypass the zones entirely and opt for dungeon or Battleground farming?
The Anvil of Crom: Celebrating the selfless gamer
Oh sh... it's time for another installment of Massively's Anvil of Crom! If I sound a bit harried, it's because there's simply not enough time in the day for all the gaming goodness going on lately. Whether we're talking about the MMO space where I'm currently dabbling in AoC, DC Universe Online, EverQuest II, and Global Agenda, or the single-player smorgasbords of Arkham City, Uncharted 3, and Skyrim, sometimes it sucks to be an adult with responsibilities! Those "sometimes" are usually during the pre-Christmas release window when game publishers all get together and decide to make our entertainment lives miserable by releasing 35 badass titles at once. Hello geniuses, how's about we stagger the badassery throughout the year; you'll still be rolling in money and your customers won't be rushing through one title to get to the next. Anyway, I'm continually on the lookout for interesting tidbits from Funcom's Hyboria, and over the past couple of weeks I've been struck by a noticeable uptick in what I'm going to call the quality community. Since AoC's 2008 launch, the game's community has been alternately awful and tolerable, and whether that's because of the game's mature rating (and the immature people it attracts) or some other factor, it's been a rare occasion when I've had cause to highlight the nice folk.
The Daily Grind: Are alts and mules a form of cheating?
In response to Beau's recent Free For All column on the topic of botters and cheaters, reader Keith wrote in to suggest that there's another form of cheating much more common and pervasive: the use of alternate characters. In games like EVE Online or Star Wars Galaxies, which limit the number of characters players can create, extra accounts are manipulated to allow a single player access to more skills through alts ("skill mules"), more storage space ("bank mules" and "auction mules"), or more avenues for safe PvP scouting. But the problem occurs in alt-friendly games too, like World of Warcraft, where it's not uncommon to see someone five-boxing an entire team of Shamans, or Ultima Online, where it's standard practice for every player to have a "craft mule" who loads up on tradeskills (to the detriment of the player economy). What do you think? Are alts and mules just another form of cheating, one that allows players with excess character slots or extra accounts unfair advantages? Or are "slave" characters just a natural and necessary part of online gaming? 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 New Class: Monks and class balance
I've wanted to talk about this for a while. The game's hybrid vs. pure debate is about to swing into high gear. With the monk, not only will there be a third class that can tank, heal or DPS, but it will be doing these things with entirely new mechanics. What does the monk mean for everyone, both those who will adopt and love it and those who will have to compete against it? The first change the monk brings along with it is simple: the class numbers game. Not only will we have 11 classes now, but all sorts of other numbers change as well. For instance, there will now be five classes capable of tanking and five capable of healing. We'll have four pure DPS classes and seven hybrids that can DPS. There will be a total of 33 specializations (although it may be easier to balance with talents shifting to the new system) to design around.
Storyboard: Army of me
There are, sadly, more character concepts in pretty much every game on the market than there is time for me to play them all. This is a horrible setup, and I've lodged a complaint with the management, but I'm not expecting any sort of response. Mercifully, in the vast majority of games, you can at least somewhat sidestep this issue by using up all of your character slots on alts. If the game gives us 12 character spaces, the odds are good that many of us will have 12 characters within a month, with that number only changing as we kill off some of that number or get more slots. All of this leads to another problem, though. If you play Alice and someone else plays Bob, there's plenty of space for the two of them to interact. But if you play Alice and Claire and Bob interacts with both of them, eventually, logic would dictate that Alice and Claire ought to interact with one another. And that's not just problematic from the standpoint of interacting with yourself; in many cases the game outright disallows that sort of login-juggling. Suddenly you need two characters to talk, and there's no way to even get them sharing the same room.
Breakfast Topic: Do you enjoy leveling?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Do you like leveling? Do you get excited when you pick a name, go through the opening cut sequence, and your new level 1 toon is born into world of Azeroth? For most of us, leveling is just something we do to get to the endgame. But for others, the act of leveling itself is the game. Who are these leveling lovers? To what extremes will they go just to feed their leveling addiction? Well, I am in a guild with a guy -- let's call him J -- who is the epitome of such a person. J has two accounts, and he has used all of his available slots to level characters up to level 85. Yet his craving to level continues. So what is a man to do once he runs out of room to create more characters? He deletes his level 85 toons and starts over. You heard correctly. My guild members and I have watched J delete numerous level 85 characters just so he can create a new character of the same class and with the same name and level up all over again. It can be slightly disconcerting to say goodnight to a level 85 rogue and the next morning say hello to a rogue with the same name who is a mere level 5. But for the most part, we guild members have gotten used to J's particular form of gameplay. Although we tease him about it relentlessly, I think we secretly all admire J; he is having fun through the simple act of leveling. Are you a leveling lover, too? %Poll-69296%
The Daily Grind: Out of all your characters, who's the favorite?
Play MMOs long enough and you'll amass your own little army of characters. Some details might be the same from game to game, even if you're not much of a roleplayer, but there's no doubt a vast difference in capability and what abilities are even available to a given player. Sure, you can have a similar-looking elf in both World of Warcraft and RIFT, but odds are good that the two will play completely differently. Maybe you only have a couple of games in your history and you're immune to the urge of making dozens of alts, or perhaps you've got a hundred characters spread over dozens of games. Whatever the case, there are no doubt one or two names that stand out in the list. So who's your favorite character out of the ones you've played? Is it a character that stands out due to class abilities, roleplaying, or some other sentimental connection? 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 Tattered Notebook: Exec. Producer Dave Georgeson on EverQuest II and EverQuest Next
If there's one thing that came out of Fan Faire about EQ Next, it's that no one will talk about EQ Next. No matter who you talked to, any time the subject came up, the answer was always, "I can't talk about that." However, Executive Producer Dave "SmokeJumper" Georgeson sat down with Massively during Fan Faire to talk more about EverQuest II, and during that interview, he did give a tiny glimpse into what that game would be like. In this week's Tattered Notebook, Massively gets the scoop on Beastlords, the dungeon builder, Freeport's revamp, and much more.
Allods Online's Rise of the Gods patch now live
It's patch day for Allods Online, and gPotato's free-to-play fantasy epic is sporting quite a few revisions. The Rise of the Gods release (version 2.0.04.49 if you're counting at home) includes new high-level zones, increased challenge via the third Astral layer (as well as some ship navigation tweaks), more vanity items, and a new reincarnation system. This last bit caught our interest as it allows high-level Allods players to create a second character that shares all of the original character's item shop goodies. Both toons also have access to the same Astral ships, gold, and a few other trinkets according to gPotato's latest press release, and the mechanic offers a new spin on the traditional alt-creation pastime. Read all about it via the 2.0.04.49 patch notes.
The Daily Grind: Does a class' popularity influence your desire to play it?
There are a few constants that dog my adventures into every MMO. I will play a female character even though I am a man, I will go nuts over pet classes if they are available, I will probably create a legion of alts before ever hitting the level cap, and I will wear stylish hats even if the stats aren't the greatest. But above all of that, the biggest constant in my playing career is that I almost always refuse to pick MMO classes that are extremely popular. I think it's because I -- like probably most of you -- like to feel unique in games, even though it's usually difficult to achieve. Choosing a class that's in the minority helps with that feeling, and conversely, going with the FOTM or whatever the kids are calling it these days makes me feel like I've got my unique snowflake status revoked. So is this insane? Do you allow class popularity to influence your desire to play it, or do you just go with whatever sounds like the most fun? 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 Road to Mordor: Packing for Isengard
Isengard. Isengard. ISENGARD. It's all I can think about since last week's E3 reveal, and I know I'm not the only one. For some reason, having a firm launch date for Lord of the Rings Online's third expansion feels like a starting pistol's gone off, and we're beginning the race to the expansion in earnest. Of course, we're not in that much of a hurry at this point. We still have well over three months to go, the beta has yet to begin, and something tells me that Turbine's got a few more tricks to pull out of its top hat before all is said and done. Still, I'm officially in "Go!" mode, and I bet I'm not the only one. While I can't make September 27th come any sooner, I can think of six ways that we can prepare for our upcoming journey into Dunland and beyond. Seven, if you include putting together the absolute perfect outfit to slay Saruman in, but that's a given. Hit the jump and I'll walk you through everything you should be doing this summer to get ready for Rise of Isengard!
Officers' Quarters: Alt run aggression
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Alt runs can be tricky things in this age of shared lockouts among raid sizes. No longer can we bring an alt who's saved to a 10-man raid to our main character's 25-man run. Scheduling alt runs can also be difficult. There's only so much time in the week where players' schedules mesh. This week, a guild leader tells the tale of the alt run that caused a firestorm and asks what he can do to resolve the situation. Hey Scott! I wanted some of your lights on a recent issue I'm being faced with. Basically, the point is twofold: misunderstandings and the limits of our powers as officers and GMs. Here's the rundown: I'm GM of a casual raiding team (Friday/Saturday night, 6 hours of so, two 10 man raids at most) who was originally built to offer those that could not afford to raid during the week an opportunity to raid decently without most of the pressure of attendance. That was a couple of years ago and we've been doing pretty well for ourselves. Just last week, one of our members (let's call him Hoots) offered an alt raid on Monday night, which was decently successful. The day after, there was an argument with an officer that basically amounted to "we should focus our activities on the weekends, since we're a weekend guild." The argument kinda escalated when another member jumped on the officer, accusing her to forbid weekday raiding, to which the officer freaked out and the argument went off tracks. It went to the officer council the day after, and we actually punished the trespasser (take a memo).
The Daily Grind: Are you protective of your alts?
The other day I realized that EverQuest II's website makes my alternate characters viewable to anyone who knows the name of my main. SOE theoretically gives me the option to toggle the public access functionality on each of my characters, but they're viewable by default (and there's currently a website bug that prevents my profile from being edited). Character lookups aren't unique to EQII of course. Titles as diverse as Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft, and EVE Online pipe in-game information to external websites all the time. What is unique, though, is forcing players to divulge the names of their alts -- even though in this case it's unintended. Though SOE has been polite enough in support ticket communications, its insistence that it can't fix its own website (and thus allow me the option of turning off the public profiles), leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. For today's Daily Grind, tell us about your feelings on alt anonymity. Did you know (and do you care) that SOE broadcasts your alts for the world to see? What are your feelings on the practice as it relates to other MMORPGs? 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 Road to Mordor: Making your alts work for you
I have a confession to make. My name is Justin, and I'm a Lord of the Rings Online altoholic. I know. I have a problem! I'm weak! DON'T STARE WITH THOSE ACCUSING EYES! I always start out in games with the best of intentions: I'm going to stick with just one character, at least until I hit the level cap. I'll only make new characters to reserve names I like. I won't get class envy and wonder what's on the other side of the fence. I'll stay strong! I'll be an oak! And then I turn out to be a willow tree, blowing about in the winds of whimsy, and suddenly I end up with alts staggered all over the leveling track. It's all right; I've come to embrace my altoholic tendencies because it really is who I am as a gamer. I like to sample everything, to try out different approaches to the game, and if I don't end up with a maxed-out uber-raider, then I can live with it. If you follow this pattern and are prone to rolling up a lot of alts in LotRO, there are several advantages you can gain over the monogamous players out there. Today I want to take a look at how you can make your alts work for you, if only to give you an excuse to keep rolling them!
Blood Sport: The art of switching characters for PvP
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in Blood Sport. I've spent my time in the skin of many different classes when striving for gladiator. Even though my Cataclysm main has been a warlock for some time now, I've enjoyed the time I've spent on my mage, warrior, druid, rogue, death knight and paladin. While I also have a level 80 hunter, I quickly decided it wasn't for me (not being able to shoot people from point blank range bugged me far too much) and moved on to greener pastures. I have yet to play a priest or shaman in high-level arena, but I definitely wouldn't be surprised if I got the urge. For better or for worse, I know a few things about switching main characters. My overarching purpose in leveling up each of those classes was to use them for PvP reasons (including my warlock). I'd be lying if I said all my decisions were correct ones; most of them worked out very poorly due to lack of foresight. However, I have learned a few things from personal experience and from watching friends play Chutes and Ladders with alternate characters.
