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Breakfast Topic: To-do
I love the to-do list that Siha posted on Banana Shoulders the other day -- I don't know if it's just the kind of people we are or if it says something about our play styles, but I too usually have an ongoing list of things I plan to do in the game, and pretty much everything I end up doing in game (from running reputation grinds to leveling up alts) follows the list.For instance, ever since Burning Crusade came out, the number one item on my to-do list was picking up a Netherwing Drake, and pretty much everything I did after that goal was set (switching over to my Hunter so I could solo the dailies more easily, doing only those quests in game every day, and leveling my professions up just to make the most out of doing them) was targeted at getting that Drake, which made it much sweeter when I finally did. In Northrend, my two main goals going in were to pick up the Kalu'ak fishing pole and to get the Green Proto-drake, and while the Oracles haven't been very giving with the Cracked Eggs so far, I have at least ground out the reps needed for those. My latest goals are to get the mounted Squire (I'm well on my way to the needed Seals) and to finally get a high-level Engineer (so I'm leveling up my Paladin, with the added bonus of having an endgame tank and/or healer whenever I want).And though this gets a little hokey, I'll actually say that aiming at and meeting my goals in game has actually helped me think about goals in real life the same way. We don't have anything so obviously as questgivers in real life, but setting a goal in game and following it through to completion can help you envision a real life goal as well, and follow that out until you finally reach it. There's so much to do in this game that I think it's very helpful to determine exactly what you want to do as you play. So what's on your to-do list?
All the World's a Stage: The new character experience in Cataclysm
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.As you know, the Cataclysm is going to bring major changes to the whole world of Azeroth. There will only be 5 new zones for leveling above 80 and one new zone for each new race -- the rest of the work they're doing involves changing the old zones, bringing them up to the standards of zones in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, adding new quests that are more appropriate to the current timeline, and completely rebuilding the areas that just didn't work so well.You are also probably aware that this is a much-needed improvement. The 1 - 60 leveling process (except for the draenei or blood elf starting areas) has long been fraught with serious flaws. Going through it the first time wasn't so bad, since exploring everything felt so new, but doing it the third and fourth times meant sheer boredom. I remember many times going to a zone, completing many or all of the quests there, and leaving without ever feeling as though I had really "been" there. Except for a few real gems, quests mostly involved spending a lot of time running long distances in order to kill more nameless bad guys -- they felt more like pest control than adventure. Just being there seemed to remove me from the story of Azeroth, and dump me in some other world where there was nothing important happening. Vast stretches of land on the Azeroth map meant absolutely nothing to me as a roleplayer: no character, no story, no meaning.
Breakfast Topic: Can you have too many alts?
I installed the new Armory app on my beloved iPhone a few mornings ago and I love it. Seriously, it had to be the best app yet. Now if only there was one which would let you send in-game mail/work the AH without logging in but that's for another Breakfast Topic. Today's is all about alts, specifically how many you have and whether it is possible to have too many.Loading up the app, I was distracted not by the cool sound effects or the sparklyness of the app but by the number of alts I have lying around. By that I don't mean active alts, I generally focus my attention on my main Serisa, but I do have a lot scattered around numerous European servers. It's quite odd to have an app tied to my account which shows all my alts, rather than ones I select (as with previous non-Blizzard iPhone apps).The other day I was talking with a friend of mine. He seems to have a thousand alts, so many that he didn't have a precise number. I asked if he had any idea of the cap for such and he guessed it had to be about fifty. He assured me if there was a cap, he hadn't hit it yet. But looking at the app, I was quite surprised by the sheer number of level 1-10 toons I have lying forgotten on servers I never visit anymore, from days when Daggerspine was down and I wanted to play Horde on another realm (usually Blood Elf females). So, come on readers, I ask you. Can you have too many alts? If yes, what's your record?
TurpsterVision: Multiboxing, Recruit a Friend Style
We can't believe it either – Turpster has been let loose on WoW.com to bring you videos from in and around the World of Warcraft! You've heard him on the WoW Insider Show, and now see him on TurpsterVision right here on WoW.com.Multiboxing has long been at the center of a heated debate within the WoW community. Some say that it is cheating; others say that it is just against the spirit of the game, all I know is, I absolutely love it!I started my journey nearly 90 days ago where I added three new accounts with Blizzard's 'Recruit a Friend' scheme. I set myself the goal of being able to have a level 60(+) of every class in the game. For some of you out there I am sure that you've already achieved this feat during the past 4 and a half years of Warcraft – I know of one person who has gone FAR further than just one of each class. I've always focused all of my attention on my main, gathering achievements, pets, mounts, mats, gold, gear, well you get the picture – and I ended up forgetting the joys of alts. So with too much time on my hands, a few extra copies of WoW and some cool bits of software (more on this below) I jumped into Azeroth with a new mission; to destroy everything!
Breakfast Topic: Do you use heirlooms?
Heirlooms are something I've not really had much experience with but as I've been doing Wintergrasp a lot since hitting 80 (prior to my burnout, that is). However as the prospect of re-rolling a very different kind of class becoming more promising, so did heirlooms. I remember hearing about them at last year's WWI and it sounded like a great idea at the time. A way to may have your main help out an alt. I would be able to outfit my lowbie toon with decent gear that gets better as she levels. Plus I like the fact they are an homage to classic WoW by taking their names and graphics from weapons no one ever uses anymore.Oddly I don't know anyone in my guild who uses them but I'm pretty sure someone out there is buying them. I see lots of people regularly clustering around the sellers in Wintergrasp Fortress, diligently checking which item they want for which alt but it seems like the only reason to buy them is if you're an altoholic.With this in mind, I'm curious, constant readers, did you buy heirlooms in order to make leveling an alt easier? Are they worth the expense? Did they make it easier to level and did you reuse them with multiple alts? What if you've never used them before, do they seem more appealing now the new items have been revealed on the PTR?%Gallery-66638%Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
WoW, Casually: Tips for leveling on a PvP realm
Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.I have played on a PvP server for years, so I can tell you with authority that I cannot recommend choosing a PvP realm if you have limited playtime. PvE servers have it so much easier as far as questing solo in contested territories. I can only imagine how much easier it would be to quest in zones like Hillsbrad Foothills and Stranglethorn Vale without the fear of being ganked every few minutes. And as you can see above, my time in Borean Tundra hasn't been exactly gank-free.
Breakfast Topic: Cross-character consistency
Most of us probably have alts at this point. On my main server, I have a character of each class (and besides the shaman and the mage, they're all at least level 40). And all of them that have leveled past Feralas have a Sprite Darter Hatchling to love and call their own. I like keeping at least something constant across all the different classes. I've met people who use consistent naming schemes, which is helpful because it makes it easier to tell which alts go with which mains. I've met people that get the same color shirt on all their alts, although it's hard to see under all that armor. Some people like to take the same leveling path every time (like me), some people like to shake it up. I even know someone who's leveled the same class to 80 several times - Warrior no less. But Rossi is widely considered to be crazy. If you have alts, is there anything you always do the same way across all of them?
A guide to shutting out the world (of Warcraft)
WoW is a very social game, and you might think that there is no getting around it. Fortunately for those who relish their alone time, there are several ways to minimize contact with other players and have some quiet time. While some people will argue that you should stop playing social games like MMORPGs, there are plenty of solo activities, and if that is what you want to do, more power to you.Today, I will be answering some reader mail from Heidi who desperately wants some peace and quiet.
WoW Rookie: Bank on it
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.Got stuff? You need a banker. Creating a dedicated character to do nothing but hang out in town, store goods and handle your finances may sound redundant at first. But time is money, friend -- and a banker can save you both. The benefits:Eliminate travel time. No more hearthing back to the city at the end of every session, and no more trudging back to your current base of operations when you're ready for some action. Trust us – when you hit the Outlands and have to travel from Shattrath City all the way back to the Old World to use an Auction House, you'll be glad to skip that whole process.Put the entire Auction House at your fingertips. Anything item you need is instantly at your disposal when your banker is at the ready. Log in the banker, buy what you need, mail it to whichever character needs it. (Remember, mail between characters on the same account is now instant.) It's that quick and easy.
Breakfast Topic: Murphy's Alt Law
The other day while doing her usual mystic rituals at the Auction House, my wife who was on her recently-turned-80 Priest saw an LFG for 25-man Archavon. She decides to hop onto her Warlock, who still needed the Valorous version of her gloves, and proceeds to do the raid. When the group fells Archavon some minutes later, surprise surprise -- the big lug drops the Valorous Leggings of Faith and the Valorous Robes of Faith. The painful irony is that there wasn't even a Priest in the raid. Head against keyboard, she couldn't help but think "if only I had brought my Priest..." but I've got a feeling that if she did, the Valorous Plagueheart Gloves would've dropped. It's kind of Murphy's Alt Law. Whatever loot drops will be what you alt needs.It's something that everyone who has an alt has experienced. Last week while doing Malygos, one of our officers hopped onto his Mage to give the raid some more DPS since his Paladin tank wasn't needed for the fight. Sure enough, Alexstraza's Gift opened up containing the Barricade of Eternity, which his alt needed. Have you guys ever experienced this? Running on your tank only to see the drop, which would have been better suited for your caster, get disenchanted or rolled off for greed? The kind of situations where you wish everything was Binds-to-Account, instead. If only you could pay off the RNG...
World of Warcraft as evolutionary model
This must be the time of year for zany social theories about videogames. First, we heard that World of Warcraft might quality as being a religion. Then we heard that it might make for better citizens. And now, in an essay over at Gamasutra on the event of Charles Darwin's birthday, Noah Falstein suggests that games like World of Warcraft are actually models for evolution -- as we level up with experience points, our characters get stronger and more evolved, and we feel comfortable with that because that's exactly what we see happening in the world around us.Technically, of course, you can't model Darwin's theory of evolution with a single character -- evolution isn't about one individual getting better, it's about a process of natural selection in a species over a period of time. To really model evolution, you'd have to play hundreds of alts, and quit them each time you ran into a problem, leaving you with just a few characters that worked really well. Wait -- maybe some of you are already doing that.But Falstein makes good points in saying that certain elements of what Darwin described as evolution have shown up in game design as well -- the idea of specialization for certain character classes, tribal and national allegiances, and even the idea of memes (which are certainly widespread in WoW -- anyone ever heard of Chuck Norris or Leroy Jenkins?) are all drawn from Darwin's thinking and definitely embodied in the game we play.
Perspective on the widespread use of alts in EVE Online
There are over 250,000 active subscriptions to the sci-fi massively multiplayer online game EVE Online, but have you ever wondered how many players that figure actually represents? The exact number of people that comprise the game's playerbase is unclear due to the common practice of playing with multiple accounts. While the end result is likely the same to CCP Games in a financial sense -- all of those active subs add up to a steady flow of income month to month -- the fact remains that the game doesn't necessarily have 250,000 different people logging into New Eden from month to month. At least, not yet, although the number of subscribers is growing. (EVE set a peak concurrent user record last Sunday of 48,065 players.)Unlike some massively multiplayer online games, EVE is based on real-time skill training rather than using the system of leveling up central to other titles. Each EVE account has three character slots, but skill training can only be active on one character at a time. And as with most MMOs, a player can only be logged into one character per account at a time -- even if multi-boxing. If a player needs to skill up specialized alts, he or she must either sacrifice valuable skill training time on their main, or run a second (or third) account to really advance. A recent EVE-Mag article by Silene Derbhan, "Alternates: Are We Schizophrenics!?", looks closely at how alt play impacts the game. Derbhan states, "I would like to delve deeper into the game mechanics, to see why players are compelled not only to play different characters, as in any other MMO, but also to pay for every one of these added characters."
10 things I learned from a destitute alt on an RP realm
I have a few alts on an RP realm that I visit from time to time, and I remember thinking to myself at one point: "These characters are a bunch of deadbeats." I'd gotten too used to the alts on my main realm being a bunch of pampered brats, spoiled rotten by the presence of a hardworking main, so financial discipline had grown to be a thing of the past. Not so on another realm where you don't have a main, and I realized that unless I went back to a few monetary basics, my alts would wind up dancing naked on mailboxes in pursuit of gold. This is a fine tactic with a long and storied history, but when your most promising alt is a level 16 Undead Mage, you're up the proverbial creek. No one wants to see a rotting, naked corpse.So I started not being a deadbeat, and it was with surprise and delight that I logged on to find the little tyke sitting on a pretty respectable pile of gold by level 21 -- as in, he can afford to pay for his level 30 mount and training several times over, and still have enough left over to train himself all the way to 45 even if he doesn't make another penny.
Addon Spotlight: Friend & Ignore Share
I play several characters often. I also like to keep track of people I pug with who play well, friends who are not in the guild, etc. The built-in friends lists works pretty well, especially now that it supports notes, but it is kept separately for each character, which makes it difficult to keep track of everybody at once. Sounds like a job for an addon! A job for Friend & Ignore Share, to be specific. F&IS is a low-configuration, drop-in solution to my problem. After it's installed, your friends lists will automatically be synchronized between all your characters. Also, by default, your alts are all added to your friends lists for easier mailing auto-complete. Ignore lists are also synchronized, as the name suggests, although this is responsible for some "player not found" errors at log-in (players need to be online to be added to the ignore list).
Breakfast Topic: New Year's Resolutions
Happy New Year, everyone! It's 2009, and this marks our first post of the year! I specifically locked everyone else out of the WoW Insider HQ so I would have the honor of writing it. Not before I asked them an important question, though. What were their New Year's resolutions for 2009? No, no, not those boring resolutions like "don't drink soda" or "watch less TV" or "stop eating babies." Nobody cares about that stuff. I mean their WoW resolutions! My resolution? Get better at PvP. I'm shooting high and want an arena title. I've never really been into PvP, whether it be battlegrounds or arenas, but it's really the one area of play I haven't had much success in. So I'm gonna give it my all, and I'm not going to do things halfway. I'll settle for nothing less than Gladiator. Okay, okay, I'll accept Duelist, but that's as low as this fella goes. As for the rest of our team...
The Queue: New Year's Eve edition
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.New Year's Eve! Hooray! Are you doing anything special tonight? I totally am. I'm going to play an alt. Gasp! Shock! No seriously, I have no idea what I'll be doing. Right now though, I'm answering questions!JLocke asked...I know the next big patch to hit will have Uldar raid in it, but are there any other cool things attached to it that we know of?
Second time through Northrend
Technically it's more like second time squared, as I'm leveling two characters to 80 right now, but the point still stands that I think now that the initial rush for most folks to get their mains to 80 is over, questing in Northrend is just plain easier.Obviously this is in large part due to the fact that you're not competing with everyone for the same kills. When I did the Ned, Lord of Rhinos quest the first time it was a chaotic melee as something like twelve groups (groups, as in two or three people per) vied to tag the guy as soon as he spawned. And even as parties would get their kill and move on, more would keep arriving so that some people waited for upwards of an hour while those that have the better instant casts tended to get the tag off. When I did the quest on my shaman a couple of weeks ago, it was much more managable, I basically just waited until the horde party tagged him and got him on the respawn. And when I did it on my night elf last night, I basically had Ned all to myself. Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord are effectively deserted compared to their state after the launch.
Breakfast Topic: What did you level first?
Our topic for today comes from one of our readers, Grindal. He (she? Sorry!) wrote in suggesting we ask all of you a question. What did you level first? Did you level your main right away? Did you try out an alt in Northrend? Did you roll a Death Knight? Heck, is your new Death Knight your new main?Personally, I went straight to my main. No questions about it. I hit the Howling Fjord and started questing like crazy. Eventually I rolled my Death Knight with the name I had been reserving for months now, but I didn't really play it at all. I just wanted to start accumulating rest. That's about all I did on all of my alts, actually. I made sure my 70s were in inns. That's it. Beyond that, it's been all Shadow Priest all the time. I was lucky in that I got into Northrend a little bit ahead of the crowds, so I'm usually a zone ahead of most people. I just finished the Dragonblight last night just as the masses rolled in, and now I have the Grizzly Hills more or less to myself. Once people start flooding that zone, I'll be over in Zul'Drak.How are things going for all of you?%Poll-22482%
CCP Games kills 'ghost training' on inactive EVE accounts
EVE Online players who habitually 'ghost train' their alts on inactive accounts are about to be given a wake-up call. The myriad options that a player can take in the sandbox game means that training up specialized alts is a common practice. The time-based skill training system in EVE means that higher ranked skills can take well over a month to train to their maximum of level five. When creating a carrier or mothership alt, for example, it's typical to simply, well, not pay $15 for a month when you're not actually playing on that character while your skill training progresses. This isn't limited to capital ship alts though. Many players unsubscribe after queuing up a long skill and resub once skill training is complete. This is how it's always been in the game (at least since this writer began playing), and by all indications is something CCP Games has been well aware of. Those days, as confirmed in today's announcement from CCP, are over.
Are you ready for EVE Offline?
Zubon over at Kill Ten Rats has written a bit of commentary about skill training in EVE Online. As players subbing multiple accounts used for different purposes know (particularly when training up initial skills), a fair amount of time is spent logging in and switching skill training, and not always so much actual gameplay seen with those characters. So, he suggests the idea of "EVE Offline" -- an extension of the game, played via a website or accessible with a mobile phone. The point of EVE Offline would be to turn skill training into its own game, not a peripheral activity related to EVE's standard (client) gameplay. He presents this idea in the form of a CCP deal announcement, laying out the conditions and terms of the fictional EVE Offline. Tongue-in-cheek or is there a serious point? You decide. The post is ultimately a way of asking: How many EVE players essentially do this anyway with their characters, paying the full subscription price but not getting enough play time on those alts?
