Why should an MMO be "Alt Friendly"

[IxilaFA]

I'm fine with WoW being alt friendly, but just not in the way it is now. Right now if you want to, your alt could be in full HFC Heroic gear two weeks after hitting level 100 and that's not cool in my opinion. I think only your main should be decked out in raid gear, and any other toons you dedicate a lot of time raiding on. I understand the importance of alts for high-level guilds and that's fine, they wouldn't be affected by a different system since they play their alts as much as their mains.

[Armourboy]

There is alt friendly, and there is so stupidly easy to level and maintain that your would be silly not to have one of every class. Seriously I keep one of everything leveled just in case when the next expansion hits if they take a big dump on my main I have an option to go to.

WoD has gone so far that you can level an alt 1-100 in a matter of days, heck maybe one day if you are willing to spend the money. 90-100 is literally a couple of hours if that for me at this point.

[LilSaihah]

There's a difference between alt-friendly and having every class at max level. Level doesn't really matter so much so long as the leveling experience is fun.

[Tuesdays]

Have you paid any attention to legion? A lot of the features announced and tested aren't alt friendly or at least they are far more conducive to a single spec or class. WoD was alt friendly because there was bugger all to do anyway once you done your weekly stuff which took 1 day for a lot of us.

They will be, give it time. Otherwise welcome healer and tank shortage back to the game.

[Rudkobing]

Sure, why not?

[IxilaFA]

There is alt friendly, and there is so stupidly easy to level and maintain that your would be silly not to have one of every class. Seriously I keep one of everything leveled just in case when the next expansion hits if they take a big dump on my main I have an option to go to.

WoD has gone so far that you can level an alt 1-100 in a matter of days, heck maybe one day if you are willing to spend the money. 90-100 is literally a couple of hours if that for me at this point.

The funny thing about it is that WoW wasn't always alt friendly. In TBC only the truly outrageous, hardcore playerbase had 5 or 6 max level alts. Most people I knew had 2, maybe 3. But when WOTLK was out and it became so easy to skip content and gear up toons using justice/valor, the expectation was suddenly there that not only should your main get gear easily but your alts should, too. So much that Cata had pretty negative feedback for several aspects that were alt-unfriendly (shoulder enchants, anyone?) Honestly I think it was at that point where the game turned and Blizzard made the critical mistake of focusing too much on making sure your alts could do just as well as your mains. Coincidentally, that's also the point where guilds started farming multiple alts, gearing them up, and stacking ridiculous class comps.

[emilylorange]

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

Because my alts have sustained more of my time and effort than my main for about 8 years now, despite being a raider..... actually.. before I was a raider I maintained an army of alts with no main, so I guess bump that to 11 years.

Make it alt friendly because it's the majority of the reason of my sub.

Now, friendly doesn't mean give me everything, I don't expect raid gear on everything because I did it once before.

'Friendly' to me means don't make playing alts a god damned boring infinite chore that I'd be silly to ignore since it creates resources I need *stares at garrison*

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

No I'd like to be known for being queen of the universe, that seems infinitly more interesting than a footnote in a video game.

[Deleted]

I think WoD would be more alt friendly without garrisons. Just thinking about doing garrisons on any of my alts makes me groan... I have done them to a limited degree on a few of them and just run gold missions now and then, but other than that I ignore them. Then there's the legendary ring. Again I wouldn't mind that one bit, except the ship yard is necessary in getting it. I like everything about getting the legendary ring except for this ship yard. Going to dungeons, doing quests and stuff... that's what I like.

I'm not saying WoD isn't alt friendly mind.. I've got 9 level 100s... but most of them are sitting in questing greens since I mainly levelled them to 100 for Legion. I've only put serious time into one of my alts. I would like to do more on other alts but just thinking about the ship yard aspect of getting the ring puts me off.

[ShiyoKozuki]

I've always wondered why people think that they should have every class at max Level.

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

I agree, I dislike a game being alt friendly unless it's a faintal fantasy MMO where you can play all classes on a single character.

[Teebone]

I used to level each class to better understand weaknesses to exploit in pvp. Kinda tired, but I didn't see anyone mention that reason yet...

[ShiyoKozuki]

It shouldnt. Alts become thing when game start run out of content 1-2 months into expansion.

- - - Updated - - -



Leveling WAS big part of the game. Now you can hardly call it leveling. You just spam dungeons, outleveling zones and facerolling way trougth them and it so boring.

Pretty much.

MMOs shouldn't be "alt-friendly", and for the longest time, they weren't.

The traditional MMO, a good MMO, caters to players who are dedicated to a single character. That MMO strives to develop frequent content to keep those players interested with new, exciting ways to progress their "main" character.

A poor MMO model (aka WoW for the past several years) is to cater to the re-rollers and character-ADHD players; Those players who aren't dedicated to anything, so they bounce back and forth between characters, trying out everything, and simply failing to get anywhere meaningful in the game.

This is the demographic that MMOs have been chasing after for years now. And all it does is lead to stale, uninteresting endgame content which is setup around boring, repetitive features that can be repeated on 14 different alt-characters (Garrisons, LFR, Apexis dailies to name a few). This content is never time-consuming, and is often designed to be completed at a quick pace. (Gotta do it on all 14 characters, remember?!)

Meanwhile, the player with the dedicated "main" character has nothing to do for months on end, because the content is focused on being entertaining only up until a certain point, after which your only options are to make a new character or wait until the next major content patch; content patches that seem to be coming more and more infrequently with each new expansion.

I don't know exactly when this change happened within the industry, (I would guess it started around 2009) but it has been the single greatest contributor to the downfall of the traditional MMORPG, and the rise of F2P, mobile-games designed for people who want quick, easy entertainment with no commitment.

Great post. Couldn't agree more!

[Transmigration]

I only started leveling a bunch of alts in WoD because I was bored out of my mind on my main and had no interest in raid progression or grinding my garrison/LFR for the ring.

I only need two more classes to 100 to be finished with them all. I don't know if I'm necessarily having "fun", but it certainly keeps me occupied when I have time to play. I'm a little bit of a completionist in some aspect, so seeing my screen full of 100s makes my brain produce happy chemicals.

[Isheria]

If anything an MMO should be alt-unfriendly in the sense that it takes loads of time to come to a point comparable to your main character. Having an MMO alt-friendly like WoW is what created the split raiding and fotm reroll problems to begin with. Because levelling and gearing is so easy and fast right now, you are expected to have multiples alts at least 2-3 in a lesser guild and and at least 4-5 in an upper echelon guild, you are also expected to play these classes just as good as your main even though you may have no interest in doing so, simply because they might be better or significantly better than the you main you actually like playing and quite possibly are better at playing. Only a fraction of players actually know how to play their alts as good as their main.

Your main class is bad for this tier? No problem just play one of your alts that are better, it will be geared up in no time anyway.
New raid released? Well better have your army of alts geared up because we need to run normal/heroic 4-5 times per week at least thanks to gearing and levelling taking no effort whatsoever currently.
Same logic applies to high-end pvp as well, your class is bad for this season no problem just reroll to current fotm for this season and be done with it, gearing takes no time whatsoever.

You still think having an MMO alt-friendly at this level is a good thing? While this is clearly a high-end play problem it is still a significant one and a reason why an MMO should not be very alt-friendly and why the focus being put on your main character is so important than being spread across a multitude of characters.

[Deleted]

I've always wondered why people think that they should have every class at max Level.

Don't people want to be known for their single class that they played and mastered?

Why should WoW become more "alt friendly" the game should encourage more depth into a single persons class that they choose. I think it's a big reason why leveling is mind numbingly boring and easy.

Why does the game give you 50 slots for chars?
How do you know if you like or not a class without trying it at max level?

[smokii]

making WoW alt friendly is what killed it for me

[Stilgaron]

It should not, there are great exaples of MMOs of "one class" where you developing kinda your own play style like in Ultima Online.

[Deleted]

Any answer to the OP's query is going to be subjective with none of them being right or wrong.

Personally, I prefer MMORPG's that limit alts greatly. Early Wow pretty much hit the spot for me - if you wanted to progress your main, you had to dedicate most of your playtime to that character. I feel it increases the dependence of each player on others, incentivising guilds. I did not need an alchemist in Vanilla because there were enough in a 62 man raiding guild to provide everyone with potions and flasks. Teamwork. My warrior provided blacksmith stuff though mostly it was plate fire resistance pieces.

Having said that, I did have a lot of time to play WoW and by patch 2.4, I had added to my warrior main, a hunter, mage, rogue, druid and a warlock. All were equipped with full T4 at a minimum. I was basically self-sufficient for any crafted items. Ironically, it did not feel 'good'.

The first alt was leveled for a variety of reasons in Vanilla WoW:

- I specced full prot with my warrior for progression raiding. While my guilides helped healing & tank specs, I still needed a fast grinder for gold. Another herbalist for Black Lotus farming was invaluable.

- While, I was practically raiding and doing guild dungeons full time with the warrior, I needed some respite during 'downtime' from the countless requests to tank PUGs. An alt was an efficient way to escape. The second alt came into being when enough people on the server knew my first alt's identity and the requests started pouring in again. Tanks were not easy to come by.

- While we were not a server first guild (by end of Vanilla, Curse had transferred to the server), we were not too far behind. An alt provided me, the GM, sanctuary from impromptu guild applications.

Alts do have their cons though my reasoning is mainly from a Vanilla/TBC GM's perspective. Once guild members leveled alts, requests to change mains started coming. Not many as few players had the time to raid 5-6 days a week, farm and level alts. I could understand why players wanted to change but it affected the guild stability and progression. A new main was not easy to catch up in gear terms if you were progressing AQ40+. Losing a healer or a tank was even worse. Since in any group of people, someone will grumble, an us-vs-them situation is potentially created. I had no choice but to have everyone declare his/her main till the end of Vanilla - it was either that or stalled progression. I'm guessing with today's catch-up mechanisms, this is no longer an issue.

[MasterHamster]

Some alt-friendliness is required to keep an aging community.

But we don't need leveling so be so fucking easy that it feels like a joke.

[Vaerys]

Lols, you mean RIP hunter. Have you not been keeping up with the alpha? They're butchering the entire class.

No, I don't keep up with the alpha, but I'm not surprised.

Edit: This is exactly what I was talking about: wholesale, unnecessary changes.
Legion Alpha: A Stampede of Hunter problems

[dontknowdoya]

Which is fine but not OP's question. It's one thing to level, say, 2, 3 or 4 classes. But people seem to expect to be able to level and gear all 11 classes. To the degree that WoW is inspired by its RPG roots, you're kind of forsaking those when you don't get players to focus.

I think it really does. If there was nothing in place to make leveling easier for alts, less people would do it. Take for instance the implementation of flying mounts. Unlocking it account wide made leveling alts quite a bit faster. Heirlooms, made it yet faster. I did not bother leveling any alts until flight was unlocked. That was incentive for me to resubscribe and work on alts.

As far people wanting to have all of the classes leveled and geared; I do not think the majority of players want that. Yes, there are a few that desire that but with Blizzard's content droughts and the ease of catching up to the relevant tier it is not an unreasonable expectation. If people have the time to do that, then more power to them. If they have a guild to support them in that endeavor, even better.

I do not really think the question should be why WoW should become more alt friendly; it should be when and how it will happen. Because truly, it has already become more alt friendly. I think the idea is if players are leveling alts, we do not have to spend as much money on content and they will maintain their subscriptions longer.