alt
Latest
Improvements to Tabula Rasa's performance on the way
The most recent iteration of Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday brought the announcement of a change to how the client will work in future deployments of the game. "The Bubble," as they call it, is an optimization that the developers hope to roll out in a future build of Tabula Rasa's Deployment 9. Until now, all static map objects such as rocks and trees loaded up front, but at the cost of decreased system performance. The Bubble will limit the client to loading only those static objects within a certain distance from the camera. The end result promises to be a client that uses less memory and delivers increased performance. They would, however, like help from the players with testing the bubble feature once it's viable. As always, Feedback Friday also addressed player questions and concerns, namely that logout countdowns in PvP will stop being exploitable in Deployment 10. As it stands, players can evade combat during clan-wars by simply logging off. Another issue in the game that's being resolved is the common complaint about how difficult it is to keep track of friends. Presently each time a player creates a new character, they must reinvite all of their friends, ad nauseam. So beginning with Deployment 9, both the friends and ignore list are now user-based instead of character-based. This change alone will eliminate a number of headaches for TR players, but check out the Feedback Friday page for more details on how the game is evolving.
Getting Death Knights epic in only 25 levels
Boomslang has an interesting point of view on the fact that in the next expansion, Death Knights will start at level 55. We've heard his concerns that there'll be too many Death Knights floating around, but he says that starting them out at level 55 is, in his words, "cheap." Every other class, he says, had to roll up from one, so why should Death Knights be any different?The given answer is something that we heard at BlizzCon last year: Blizzard wants this Hero class to be epic in a way that no other class has before, so they don't want anyone who can literally command death running around as a level one noob. But does that justify cutting off more than half of the Death Knight's lifespan? Can a class that you started past the halfway point really be as epic as that Hunter or Warlock that you leveled to 80 all the way up from level 1?Again, we don't yet know exactly how a Death Knight is created -- maybe there's something in the quest to get one that will explain what's going on here. And other people say that just letting the Death Knight start at 55 isn't enough -- if you get a character to level 80, you should be able to get a head start with any class, without having to go back and do all the lowbie quests again. We'll see in the expansion if Blizzard can make a class that you level only 25 levels feel as epic as they say it will.
Keys to a successful alt?
I am a terrible leveler. I started playing back in January 2007, and in all that time have managed to produce a single 70. Admittedly, I think she's a very good 70 and she stays busy, but you would think that nearly 1 1/2 years would be a sufficient period of time to level another class to the endgame. Guess not.Lately I've been trying to fix this and have gone back to leveling a few alts. While talking to a friend last night about his propensity for leveling alts at the approximate speed of an SR-71, it occurred to me that I have two warriors, only one of whom has leveled quickly. The other just can't seem to fill up the XP bar. Obviously there's no class difference to cite as a possible reason, so I started thinking about what affects the leveling speed of an alt, and why I've got so many unsuccessful ones littering the character selection screen:
Tracking alts officially within the guild interface
It's been almost a full year since I last saw this brought up, and we still haven't seen anything from Blizzard on it. Eric over on WoW LJ brings up the issue of tracking alts within a guild. As we found out last time, most people just use guild notes (or helpful addons) to keep track of whose alt is whose inside a guild, and it works OK -- assuming people are up front about when they're logging in on another toon.But still, it seems like an official interface would work much better. And especially considering that Blizzard is actually going to start encouraging alts as a part of the gameplay (you have to have a character at least 55 on the account to start up a Death Knight, and there are rumors that alts will benefit from reputation grinds as well), it seems like they might be interested in making the connection between characters on the account a little more obvious.And as we said last time, there are benefits to the guild as well -- you never know when that lowbie leveling through Westfall might actually have a Death Knight ready to tank for you. I'm still not sure about marking alts in the Armory, but if you join up to a guild, I'd think guilds should have the right to know, officially, who's an alt of whom.
The Main Man
EVE Online is a game where collective action trumps individual action. It's certainly a game that can be played solo although nowhere near as effectively as when your main's activities are supported or enabled by an alt. CCP provides 3 character slots per account, but skillpoint training can only progress on one character at a time. So where the real alt-play comes in is with dual boxing -- running two accounts at once to facilitate an activity. The main/alt duo can take a number of forms, by no means limited to the following basic examples:
It's Springtime for King Wrynn and Azeroth...
The days are getting longer and the nights a tad warmer. Now is a good time to go through and clean your house in the typical spring cleaning exercise. It's a good time to do that in Azeroth, too.For me this entitles a few things with my mounds of inventory items. First, I organize my bank alts. They each are assigned certain categories of items. For instance my first bank alt gets all my gems, raw ore, processed ore, and leather. My second bank alt gets all my enchanting mats, my herbs, reputation items, food, and other tidbits. Now both these alts have been around for about 3 years. In fact, my first bank has a /played time of 10 days at level one. As a side note having a level one bank alt at ten days really makes me question my sanity...but oh well, on with the article.
How many 70s does Eyonix have?
Surprisingly, US CM Eyonix has dropped in on a thread titled "How many 70s do you have?" I'm surprised because I wouldn't think it would necessarily be in a CM's best interest for people to know what classes they play, as a common perception in the community is that if you don't have a level 70 <insert class here> you obviously know nothing about the class and should stop talking. Anyway, here's the four classes that the whelpling has gotten to the level cap (in the order he put them in): Shaman Priest Druid Paladin
WoW Rookie: I rolled the wrong class
If, like I did, you came into World of Warcraft with no real idea what the game was about, you may have just picked the first class that looked interesting and started playing. (If, instead, you read a guide to what the various classes can do, you may not have the following problem.) In my case, I picked Paladin, because I'd been playing a lot of D&D beforehand and the Paladin class there is a good melee combatant, especially against demons, undead and other evils, with some spot healing thrown in. I expected to run around hitting stuff with a sword. I didn't understand how healing works in WoW (that you could stand in one spot casting heal spells on someone else while he tanks a monster, for instance, didn't even occur to me) and so I happily leveled him to the mid 20's grinding away, doing the occasional quest, and finally got my first invite to a Deadmines group.As the healer. Now, I didn't even understand how healing worked in the game yet, much less that I was expected to do it: I knew there were healing spells, mind you, but I figured they were for after the fight or emergencies in it, and that (like the paladins I'd played in other settings) I'd have to run up and touch folks to use them. I had no idea I could stand back and cast heals, much less that all that lovely 'of the bear' gear I'd been collecting meant I had the mana pool of a diseased marmoset.
Forum fun: does Tabula Rasa's cloning system cure alt-itis?
Do you or somebody you love find yourself constantly rolling new characters? Are you infatuated with that new toon smell? Have you maxed out the number of characters in your stable on not just you main server, but on two or three other servers as well? You may just be suffering from a condition widely known as alt-itis. There's no known cure for alt-itis, but there are some experimental treatments being used in mainstream MMOs that you might be interested in hearing about.One of these, is Tabula Rasa's clone system. A discussion on the topic sprouted up on the Planet TR forums on the topic, with the OP going so far as to call the cloning system Tabula Rasa's "lady in a red dress." While I was not sufficiently persuaded that the thread wasn't just an excuse to make a Matrix reference, I think the larger discussion is a salient one. Does a cloning system like Tabula Rasa's really represent a cure for alt-itis? Some would argue that it's a boon for casual players who don't have time to level eight different characters independently to the end-game, but who want to see the content. Others would argue that Tabula Rasa's tiered system means that most cloning opportunities save you a negligible amount of playtime - after all, you only have two ways to go with a clone at level 30, you can't jump branches. It's an interesting discussion worth checking out (even if the topic has since wandered a bit).
A world full of Death Knights
This little informal survey by Ralloszek over on the WotLK forums raises a pretty good question: is anyone not planning on making a Death Knight when the next expansion hits? We're going to end up with a world full of pale people in black armor wielding gigantic frostblades-- maybe Blizzard should call it "World full of Lich Kings."It's pretty easy to see that not everyone will switch their main (I don't ever foresee leaving my main, although I do plan to level a Death Knight as an alt), but even if people just roll them to check it out, it reminds me a lot of the Star Wars Galaxies "new game enhancements" where they made Jedi a playable class. If you can roll a Jedi as a class, why would you roll anything else?Of course, we could give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt here-- they haven't revealed much at all about the game's first Hero Class, so maybe it'll be so hard to get one that they really will be very rare, or they'll only be allowed in certain areas (so you won't see a pack of Death Knights swarming around the mailbox in Stormwind). We already know that they'll start at a higher level, so the good news is that you won't see Elwynn Forest flooded with a bunch of level 1 Death Knights. But as for other ways to keep what is supposed to be a special class special, we'll have to see what Blizzard comes up with.
You feel normal
I've leveled up my share of alts in the past and I tend to be fairly strategic about doing so. The most important rule was to only play them when they had rest XP accumulated. Sometimes I'd enjoy a certain class so much that I'd occasionally break this rule, but I usually stuck to it. I know I'm not the only one that has done this. In all the various guilds I've called home over the last few years, I've often seen messages like "Well, time to switch over. Out of rest experience on this character."The last patch dramatically increased the rate of character progression between levels twenty and sixty. Over the last week or so, I've popped over to my Shaman alt to check out some of the new content for lower levels. Running around, completing mostly green quests, I got carried away and now find myself at level fifty. I progressed ten levels over the span of a few days with hardly breaking a sweat. This quick leveling has become addicting, but now my rest experience has run dry. I'm tempted to keep playing, but a voice in the back of head is nagging me to log off in an inn and to go play another character for a few days.What have your experiences with the new experience rate been like? Are you a rest XP fanatic, like me? Or do you just keep plugging away, regardless of your rested state?
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Have you been neglecting your alts?
When I first heard about the leveling improvements that are forthcoming with patch 2.3, I was very happy. As an admitted alt-o-holic, creating and leveling alts is the main thing that's kept me interested in WoW for the past three years. When the last expansion came out, I had five level sixty characters, with one more nearly there, and I've been diligently leveling them up to seventy since then. My ultimate goal is to level up one of each class at some point and I'm only three more characters away from success. The next patch will definitely help push my Shaman, Mage and Priest up through the ranks.When the long wait times for character copies subsided, I transfered my level forty shaman to the test realm in order to check out the improved experience gains. The good news is that the change was certainly noticeable. While I don't have any hard data, with full rested experience, I was able to gain about three levels in just a few hours while doing quests that were mostly green to me. The bad news is that I've been spoiled by the new experience rate and have been unable to continue leveling my alts on the live server. Have you experienced anything similar? Are your alts being neglected until 2.3 comes out?
Brooms not going bye-bye (yet)
Everyone is having so much fun with their Headless Horseman brooms these days during the Hallow's End event in WoW, but with an incorrect tooltip and heaps of confusion (including our own) about just how long they'll last, most players aren't quite sure just how much fun they're going to have.Bornakk clears up some of the confusion (which he also had a hand in creating), saying that "the items with a duration on them won't all vanish on November first, you just won't be able to get any new ones." So now here is the factual summary of the official words on blizzard regarding your beloved broom mounts: They last for 14 days, not just for one ride. They last for 14 days of played game time on the character that possesses them, not 14 days of real time, and extending beyond the Hallow's End event for however long you keep them on an unplayed character. Just think about how those of you who were patient and saved up your brooms on an alt can try and sell them later on when Hallow's End is over, but people still wish they could ride in witchy (or Quidditchy) style. Do you think they'll be worth something?
Epic gear coming to Scarlet Monastery (and elsewhere)
Here's a little change I missed in the midlevel updates notes: Epic gear will now drop for lowbies. Example number one is the Deadman's Hand, which will drop from Arcanist Doan in SM, and has a proc that "freezes" attackers for a full three seconds. Hawt! Eyonix, who's poking around the forums today after a long absence, confirms that the proc will scale with level, which means it'll be basically useless by 70.But still-- Epic gear for lowbies! What is the world coming to? A quick search on Wowhead doesn't bring anything else new yet that I can see (lots of Epic turn-ins and the old World Drops that we already know about), but this can't be the only Epic they're adding to the lowbie dungeons-- I'm sure we'll see lots more pop up as more people test the PTR and the patch eventually goes live.Yes, giving Epics to folks who haven't hit even 50 yet might seem a little strange-- just how epic can a piece of equipment be if a knockover like Arcanist Doan can hang on to it? But it's more than worth it, as even lowbies running instances should have a chance to know what it feels like to loot a boss-- and find some of those tasty Professor Plums.
Breakfast topic: Switching mains
Ever since I got a computer sophisticated enough to play WoW and created my own account, my main has been my troll rogue. Sure, occasionally I'd experiment with an undead warlock or night elf hunter, but my heart and gear belonged to the rogue. But recently, I've found myself just not satisfied with my rogue -- and just not getting raid spots with her. Maybe it's the fact that my weapons suck. Maybe it's my low hit rating. Maybe it's because we have a ton of rogues. Maybe it's because a lot of fights are melee-unfriendly. Maybe it's because I wrote an article mocking the guild's second-in-command. Actually, it's probably the last one. Instead, I've been leveling my paladin. Now that I'm in Outlands, have finally found a pleasant profession (jewelcrafting), and am getting closer and closer to that magic number of 70, I'm considering asking the officers if I can make my paladin my main and raid on her. Not only would it be better for the guild (we only have a couple of paladins) and better for me (woo hoo, an actual raid slot), I'd like to experience the healing side of the game. I've been DPSing forever and am tired of it. I'd say about half the players I know have a different main character now than the one they started with. Have you ever switched your main? What did you start out with, and what have you ended up with? Were you happy with the change?
What's in a name?
Last night over guild chat the subject of naming our characters arose. Someone asked exactly how we chose our character names. It's a pretty personal question, at least it is for me. Being a writer pretty much all my life, my player character names are mostly names from my writing. There are also those characters that have been created out of jokes, or as representations of their jobs like Donations. I've built character names out of thin air as well, mostly because I love character creation beyond all other things. Most of my characters' names are fantasy in nature since being a fantasy writer I tend to be a stickler on that sort of thing. But some of my characters have looser based names. My priest is named Mandie, for obvious reasons. My paladin I've called Vashlyra, which is a combination of my dogs' names. I once even had a gnome rogue named Runnt. Perhaps that is part of why I love creating new characters so much. I get to give them a name, and infuse them with personality and back story. Every new character is a chance to rewrite the story, and each name is so important to me. But I am just one player in millions. I know my guild mates choose names differently. We have one player whose characters are all named variations of the same word. We have another who picks all his names from the random name generator. And yes, we are a guild populated mostly by alts, if you must know, so there are plenty of characters to name. On the other hand, I have seen many, many names that I cannot stand. I have actually found a correlation between horrible players and those who named their characters by picking a cool word they like and tacking on the letter X at the end (CipherX, you know who you are.) On our server I have run into Linksys, Pallyman and my personal favorite Ooitsahamster. I have even seen some I cannot believe haven't been reported. Now while I am more of a name snob, I can see why people choose to have fun with their character's names. What I cannot see is playing a character with a ridiculous name until 70. How do you choose your character names? Is it something tied to characters you have always played, or do you close your eyes and hit 'random?' What makes you connect with a name, or do you have no connection to it at all?
But I need that for my alt!
Mingka of Dath'Remar shares her story of genuinely needing an item that dropped on a Sunken Temple run, the Robes of Insight, only to have it snatched away by greed. The hunter in the group rolled need on the item as well, with the excuse that his alt/friend/guildmate/girlfriend needs it also. The bottom line question: who is allowed to roll on an item that drops while grouped? The debate continues, but people are very united in the answer that items should always go to players who were present for the drop and need the item as a direct upgrade. What happens if nobody directly needs the item is still a question. I personally think that loot should be discussed if a clear upgrade situation is not present. Many people have alts, and would like to outfit those characters. But All of us have mains that require funding and gear/enchant/gem upgrades to progress further.
Alts and alts and alts, oh my!
I probably play World of Warcraft way too much. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right? My addiction stems from not being happy with one character, or two, or three... I have 7 characters leveling in the Outlands right now, two of which are raiding Karazhan. Why can't I stick with just one and work on it until it's the best of the best? Because I love my alts! I created my first alt when my primary character, a Hunter, hit level 52. I'm not entirely sure why I did so, but it probably had something to do with having out-leveled my friends by about 20 levels and wanting to help them without hindering our playing experience. My first alt was a Warlock, who I took to 60 first, becoming my first instance grinding and raiding main character. The hunter stood on standby for a while, until my guild had Molten Core on farm-mode, upon which I took him to 60 and brought him in for our alt runs. He was one of the first to complete the Lok'delar/Rhok'delar/Lamina quest in our guild, which he still has (at least, until I dust him off and bring him out of retirement). After a few months with them, I met other people who played on a different server, and they needed main tanks for their progression. So I was off and running with a Warrior, who was level 60 in a matter of a few weeks. I helped that guild progress through Blackwing Lair when I took my first burnout hiatus. It took a few months of enjoying other things, more real-life than virtual, when I was feeling the pangs of withdrawal and logged back in.
Breakfast Topic: How did you pick your class?
When I first started playing the game, way back when, I didn't really pick a single class -- instead, I rolled one of nearly everything and played through a few levels here and a few levels there. I honestly don't recall how or why a warlock became my main character and my first class to 60 (and, yes, I was a warlock before warlocks were cool). It was picked, primarily, at random. I didn't have any detailed knowledge of any of the classes, but happened to enjoy leveling that one more than the rest. But after that first character, I picked classes with a bit more knowledge of what I was getting into -- after all, you can't level to 60 without learning at least a little something about the other classes. My next to 60 was a priest, whom I selected because I wanted something that was the polar opposite in playstyle of a warlock -- so I leveled a priest. (In hindsight, it wasn't so terribly unlike a warlock for soloing or questing: they're both classes with fear doing shadow damage. But in groups they were worlds apart.)And now that I've started off with my story, I'd love to hear yours. how did you pick the class you're playing today? Was it the result of hours of meticulous research? Was it a random choice? The casual recommendation of a friend? Done because your group of friends needed tanking/CC/DPS/healing? Or did you just try everything until you found a good fit?
Around Azeroth: Whereami?
This isn't the first shot I've seen of a low level player running around Outland (no, players can't go through the Dark Portal before level 58, but they can be summoned by a warlock or ported by a mage at any level), but I think it may be one of the most amusing. Reader Nirun sends in this shot of an amusingly named level one warrior running around -- not in Shattrath City but outside Hellfire Citadel itself! And to the burning question of, "Is there really any place in Hellfire Peninsula a level one player can stand without aggroing half the zone?" The answer, apparently, is yes!Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part. See more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
