rerolling
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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.
The Daily Grind: Should alts get special bonuses?
I'm a big fan of the notion that when you hit the level cap in a game, the MMO should encourage you to roll alts by giving you bonus incentives. One of my favorite browser titles, Kingdom of Loathing, has a nifty ascension mechanic that bestows significant bonuses on subsequent characters if you decide to reroll. Since alts theoretically extend one's interest and time in a game, I think it's in the studio's best interest to make rolling them an attractive proposition. There are many ways that alts could receive special bonuses, such as faster leveling speeds, unique gear, legacy skills, and so on. The question is, should alts get these bonuses, and if so, what do you think they should be? 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!
Wasteland Diaries: Long-term goals
So you're a brand-new clone in Fallen Earth, dressed in your snappy LifeNet ensemble? So far you've managed to get yourself blown to bits inside the bowels of the Hoover Dam. Remember that awesome scoped battle rifle you were using? Well, forget that. The weapons you will be using for the time being will be a bit more primitive and a lot less deadly. Luckily for you, Elena Winters was able to respawn you safely away from the dam. After being led around by the nose, you're no doubt ready to begin making some of your own decisions. I'm going to tell you that you aren't quite ready to do that. Not just yet. Before you go off on your own, there are some important things you need to know. These things I will tell you will save you a lot of trouble later on. I wish someone had given me all the information I'm going to give you, but I learned it the hard way. As they say: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This also holds true in Fallen Earth. Now that you're in a safe place, I'll get that handy information to you after the break.
Officers' Quarters: Leveling as a guild in Cataclysm, part 2
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. Last week, a reader wrote in to ask about some dos and don'ts as a guild leader during the character leveling process of an expansion. Obviously, we're focusing on Cataclysm here, but many of these tips will be relevant for any expansion with a raised level cap. Part 1 provided four tips: Have a plan. Organize group activities. Don't rush anyone. Set a date for the endgame. This week I've got five more.
Forum post of the day: Born with a plastic spoon
Aside from players that are bitter because they missed out on Recruit-a-Friend benefits, is there anything wrong with this program. Kuahs of Kil'jaeden has encountered problems with raising enough cash to keep up with gear and ability upgrades. He has a level 70 character, but rerolled with his recruit on another server. He can't simply send money down from his main, and is sitting at level twenty-two with level twelve abilities. Many posters suggested sending down money from a main character, which isn't so helpful on a new server. Others made the usual suggestion of gathering skills for sale on the auction house. While this is a good suggestion, mining and herbalism will suffer the same problem of being outpaced by leveling. There is always the option of begging for gold in major cities, though I personally don't recommend this method.
Breakfast Topic: Finding motivation to level or grind
Arrowd of the US Cairne server has a question: How do you keep leveling without getting bored, abandoning a character, or rerolling? She says that she's had around 14 characters, and she's never managed to stick with one past about level 45. She always gets bored, and she wonders if there is a way to avoid it. Now as I've mentioned before, I've leveled a lot of characters myself, and have a few 70s, but even I can sometimes get a little bit tired of the grind, and sometimes even I need to make up goals to keep myself focused. Sometimes I even need it for my level 70s if I'm running low on gold or raiding supplies. In that way, I can definitely feel where she's coming from, but I do (usually) manage to keep myself motivated. Sometimes, for me, the Motivation is pretty simple. For example, on that Shaman I'm leveling, what keeps me going is the prospect of getting some sweet Dual Wield action going. I'm actually having a lot of fun with her, so I don't need to focus on it too hard, but the idea of imagining her with 2 axes enchanted with Windfury is a mental picture that is too awesome to put into words. I mean, we're talking cover of a Dragonforce album awesome. So now I turn the question over to the rest of you. Whether it be leveling on a lowbie or grinding on a 70, how do you keep yourself motivation when the going gets tough and you get tired out? Is it the promise of a new skill? A new piece of gear? What keeps you charged up and logged in?
Breakfast Topic: Rerolling our roots
The question arose in the WoW official forums "Why do they call it 'rolling?'" This is of course in reference to creating new characters. The original poster pointed out that there really is no rolling involved just selection. I'm sure its obvious to most of us that the terms comes from pen and paper role playing games where we roll dice to determine character statistics and sometimes other attributes. But it got me thinking of terms that we use for WoW that came from other games: The battleground Zerg comes from Starcraft's Zerg race which was kind of a fast, battle driven faction. DKP is short for Dragon Kill Points, a term that dates back to EverQuest when the main bosses were dragons. Nerf means to make things less powerful, and refers to the Nerf brand of spongy toys. For some reason we refer to instances as dungeons, despite the fact that Stockades is the only actual dungeon that comes to mind. Though I have to admit, even in D&D dungeon crawls were typically done in caves or castles. It's surprising how terms seem to stick with us even when they're obsolete. Speaking of rolling, when was the last time you actually rolled down a window in a car? It's good to go back and remember out gaming roots. I'm sure there are many more crossover terms, and terms from the World of Warcraft lexicon like Leroy Jenkins, will out live Azeroth. For the life of me I can't find the etiology of the term "twink." What else am I missing?
No new character slots for Wrath of the Lich King, says Bornakk
If you're planning to make a Death Knight on your favorite server, and you're an altoholic (I myself am guilty on both counts), you've probably already thought about your delimma, and Bornakk drove home the point today: There are still no plans to make extra character slot for WoTLK. Just like the problem you may have had deciding what characters to delete to make your Draenei or Blood Elf, you'll have to make the same decision again. I suppose it's understandable. I'm sure it would be a rather large jump in server storage space needed to give everyone a massive amount of extra characters. Still, It's going to be tough for a lot of people to delete or transfer a character so they can play their new Death Knight with their friends, I imagine. Bornakk does point out that at least, with the level 55 creation level, you can start the Death Knight on a seperate server and get a feel for it before deciding if you want to delete or transfer a character on your main server. Still, I know that half the fun for me is getting a good name reserved for my character, so I've personally already deleted a lowbie Draenei Paladin from my main server in order to create a placeholder character with my chosen name. [Thanks for the forward, Kevin!]
Is rerolling worth it?
After my paladin hit 70 a few weeks ago, I felt kind of ... empty. I wasn't raiding due to scheduling, I'm terrible at PVP, and I had little desire to run instance after instance getting my pally better healing gear. Then a real-life friend who lives far away suggested that I roll a character or two on his new server, Medivh. And thus, I created three new characters, one for every class I've never played (undead warrior, blood elf priest, and troll shaman.) I'm having fun figuring out the specs and professions of my new, nearly-naked lowbies. But it's been so long since I began a serious character on a new server, I'm getting bombarded by all the issues that face new players. I don't have any bag space, or money for that matter -- I can barely afford my skills and food. Walking places seems ridiculously slow, I have no higher-level friends to run me through instances, and my new abilities are confusing and numerous. All of this makes me wonder if for the majority of the population, rerolling (defined as starting from scratch on a server where you have no characters) is worth it. Most of us have relatively wealthy 70s, strong guild and friend connections, and an overall sense of history on a single server. If our servers are our homes, then rerolling is leaving your money and possessions behind to move to a new city where you don't even have an apartment yet. What problems have you found when rerolling? When you reroll, do you generally abandon your character before going to Outland, or do you keep pushing on to midlevel? All in all, is rerolling worth the strife, or do you prefer to stick on one server?
Rerolling for fun and... well, for fun, there's no profit.
Tommy writes in with an interesting question: do we have any tips for rerolling? Since I've played on a lot of different servers in order to play with friends, I felt like I could give this one a shot.First off, if you're really rerolling instead of merely rolling up an alt (and it's a tenuous difference at best... but starting on a new server, for instance, is different from rerolling on your original) you need to make some choices. Rerolling horde when you originally played alliance means you're going to be making some adjustments, even if you're starting a character of a familiar class. You won't have to relearn everything, of course, but the quests will be different, for starters. Horde and alliance auction houses tend to be different on the same server, depending on which faction is more numerous, so don't assume you'll be able to get all your gear from there.
Waiting to reroll
While I'm referencing threads on the European forums, this situation is no less common on US realms. Some players out in the World of Warcraft are simply chronic rerollers. They love the environment of a new realm -- a fresh economy, plenty of other people to level up with, and that thrilling race to level 70. And since Blizzard hasn't released any new realms (for players on US or EU realms) since the release of The Burning Crusade in January, players of this sort are really getting a bit antsy. Blizzard, for its part, is holding to its stance that they'll release new realms when overall population requires it -- but until then, the best you're going to get is low population recommended realms. Vaneras thoroughly explains the situation for us: the fact that people enjoy playing on brand new realms just isn't a compelling reason for Blizzard to create new realms when existing realms have plenty of room to grow.But what's the solution? Vaneras tell us that merging existing low-population servers in order to be able to open new realms isn't going to happen. (And I can understand why -- merging realms and then rolling out new realms is a lot of work by Blizzard's tech team, and essentially serves no purpose.) Vaneras suggests that you could get yourself organized and ready for new guilds on new realms, but that's probably little comfort. Some posters suggest a rerollers' realm of sorts -- a realm that resets every few months to offer players wanting an authentic rerolling experience a chance to race to 70 on a regular basis, without the need for any new realms. But what do you think? Do we need new realms? Is the fun of playing on a new realm enough of a reason for Blizzard to regularly deploy them -- even if they'll wind up ghost towns down the road, when players abandon them for other fresh realms?
Some thoughts on re-rolling
Like many that read WoW Insider, I've been playing World of Warcraft pretty much since release. Many people I know who've been playing that long have spent all of their time on one server. Mine has been spent with my guild, running up one of various characters to endgame. Raiding. Fun faction farming like Thorium Brotherhood, Argent Dawn, or Timbermaw Furbolgs. (I can hear your yawns of excitement now!) Then Burning Crusade came out, and I thought to myself... "Aha! Something new to do." Now I'm running my Druid and Mage up to L70, having run my Rogue up, and my guild is starting to look at running alts through Kara. And I'm farming rep again, only this time it's Lower City and Thrallmar and I think I even have faction with someones best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night... So when we opened up the It came from the Blog guild on Zangarmarsh, I jumped in with both feet for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to run a Rogue up so that I had a testing ground to play with maces and daggers and fist weapons and not just my beloved Swords. After all, if I'm going to help bring a good quality Rogue column to the Rogue community, I should be running the builds for myself. The second reason is because since Burning Crusade has come out, there have been huge calls for more new realms so people can run from 1-70 on them, fresh. I figured I'd see what it was like to seriously try to run a new character up after 2 1/2 years of playing the game on the same server with the same people, and a pile of gold just one in-game-mail away.
Rerolling or alt-itis?
Reading through the forums I have seen several posts about people wanting to reroll characters, and this confuses me. I am an altaholic myself, and I spend my time spread between 9 characters, the 10th being our guild bank alt. I might even say I have more alts than that, considering the two I created for It came from the Blog. What this means is that when I log in, I choose a character to play based on how I am feeling at the time. Sometimes I feel priestly, sometimes I feel the need to rage against the world. But back to the concept of rerolling. Rerolling a character, as I understand it, entails completely deleting the character you have been working with in order to start anew. I have had friends that did this, one in particular that deleted his hunter in favor of a priest, only to regret the decision later. I asked him why he didn't just leave the character since you have 10 slots to work with. The only reply I got was a /shrug.
Starting from scratch with the same class
Kraylessa on WoW Ladies has a problem I've been thinking about lately as well. When I first started playing WoW, I rolled an NE hunter (yes, I know it's a cliche noob class and race but I was young and impressionable at the time), and while I was able to get her all the way up to 60, I've since abandoned her for another server (because a friend made me move) and for the Horde (because, come on, Horde rocks). I've since rolled up a shaman, a rogue, and a mage, but even after playing and enjoying those, I still long to play a hunter again-- the combination of crazy ranged DPS, traps, and a powerful pet is like a siren song to me.So I'm faced with the possibility of rerolling the same class I already played, and, like Kraylessa, this is not really something I want to do (at least I wasn't made to reroll because of an accidental character deletion). True, it has been a while since I've played the hunter, so things have changed a lot (not to mention that I've learned a lot as a player). And I'd likely try another spec-- my hunter was a marksman, so I'd probably try a BM (Kray doesn't want to level her priest shadow, but I have no idea why-- shadow priests are hella fun, and if she missed out by leveling with holy the first time around, she owes it to herself to level a face melter).But it still seems like it would be boring, like a suspense movie I've already seen. Have you ever rerolled the exact same class? Was it definitely worth it or completely a pain? I'd really enjoy having a brand new Blood Elf hunter as a main, but I just don't know if I'd enjoy grinding all the way to 70 again.
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Breakfast Topic: Chronic rerolling
My friend Jack (name changed to protect the innocent) is a chronic reroller of the worst variety. New server comes out? He is there! He quickly levels until about 35 or so, then another batch of servers hit, and off he goes. He really enjoys the uninflated AH prices, the lack of high levels making him feel inferior when he strolls through Ironforge and the general chaos of the early days of a server. He even admits to enjoying the lame level 25 guild drama. I mean, he pays fifteen dollars a month, and he should be able to play any way he wants. But on the other hand, chronic rerollers can leave some servers barren after the initial rush. If you check out any of the various WoW census sites, such as Warcraft Realms, you will see some servers barely chugging along. Do chronic rerollers contribute to that? So what do you guys think? Does Blizzard encourage chronic rerolling with constant new server releases? Wouldn't it be easier to slap the recommended tag on low population realms and get those servers some new blood? Or does it not matter, and they should cater to guys like Jack just like they try to cater to other player types?
