We need more account-wide things.

[Kazuchika]

It's Blizzard's subtle way of saying "we fucking hate alts and if we could get away with doing away with them entirely we would"

[Lane]

Agreed, OP.

Yup, this is the alt-killer expansion.

It's certainly been a deterrent. I realized the other day that due to the reputation requirements in Suramar I'll only be doing that zone once.

While I agree that many of the grinds need to have checkpoints which unlock for the entire account, you need to be careful about over-doing it and making it so there's no replay value for alts also.

Right now we're at one end of the scale. TOO much is character specific, and not enough is account wide. Blizzard can definitely stand to give us more account-wide options, but if they go too far they'll spoil it.

It's the grinds that weren't even fun the first time on a 'main' that you have to do consecutively for each subsequent alt. Reputation has always been in that camp for me, honor as well, now AP without AK, etc.

[Deleted]

While I agree that many of the grinds need to have checkpoints which unlock for the entire account, you need to be careful about over-doing it and making it so there's no replay value for alts also.

Right now we're at one end of the scale. TOO much is character specific, and not enough is account wide. Blizzard can definitely stand to give us more account-wide options, but if they go too far they'll spoil it.

Blizards problem is that they are ALWAYS at one end of the scale. They seem to be incapable of choosing the golden middle way.

[SirCowdog]

Try D3. Everything there is account-bound. And still D3 is perfectly replay-able. Even leveling.

I regularly play D3 hardcore. You have to understand that D3 has an entirely different design philosophy and dynamic. It's not under the influence of the monthly subscription model, and it is also a completely different playstyle.

D3 uses seasons to reset things and keep it interesting. Personal character progression of power is MUCH faster than WoW, and the enjoyment comes from trying new builds. Progression is based on repetitive Greater Rifts rather than new unique raids every few months.


Iirc not everything is account wide, either. Set items are class specific. Cube unlocks for legendary traits as well, unless I'm remembering wrong. I can't remember if GR rank is character specific also.

[Spotnick]

This really is debatable. I kind of enjoyed back in the days getting titles and mounts on my alts. It gave purpose to alts instead of feeling like extra specs of your main character.

Account-wide stuff isn't always the right move.

Might as well to full Final Fantasy and allow you to play all classes/spec with your main.

[FuxieDK]

Yup, this is the alt-killer expansion.

Same was said about EVERY expansion, since WotLK...

[Shangalar]

Nope, we already have too many account-wide things. Putting aside the fact that they want you to spend more and more time online leveling, gearing and doing others stuff on your alts as a way to keep you as a customer, I really feel that we already have too much.

For example, I typically don't invest a lot of time in even leveling alts, let alone playing. And I really like to collect as many achievements as possible so achievements like "get all professions to max rank", "level all different classes" and "level a character of different factions" are killing me. I will do it some day because they're achievements, but it really throws me off. There are other things like certain titles and some mounts people can use that annoy the hell out of me when I see them on random alts. I don't have a huge issue with account-wide stuff, but let's not pretend that you are/were so good on these characters at various points in the past, if those characters existed at the time at all.

But talking about current issues, I don't see why honor/prestige/anything current should be account wide. Work for it.

[Blayze]

Why are you so entitled. You should actually work for things instead of expecting Blizzard to just hand you things on a platter. Why don't you just demand a button that will equip your alts with the same gear as your main. Thats what you are asking for here. Stop being so lazy.

I don't give a shit about the gear.

[Accendor]

Specifically, the Honour grind and the Illidan and Balance of Power questchains.

Na, it's fine. This way you have something to do on your alts. Just play the game as it is intended.

That being said some small adjustments could be made for the Illidan quest (time gating that stuff behind 8x10 is just stupid).

[munkeyinorbit]

I don't give a shit about the gear.

Then why do you want account wide things. Account wide things lead directly to gear.

[Serissa]

Iirc not everything is account wide, either. Set items are class specific. Cube unlocks for legendary traits as well, unless I'm remembering wrong. I can't remember if GR rank is character specific also.

Do you want to use WD bonuses on Barb? Does it even makes sense?

"Usable by class" =/= "bound to character". You can still swap sets between characters of same class.

You can even farm set for one class using different class. It doesn't drop as often as "native" set but still drops. You can even remove level requirements of new set and transfer it to level 1 character. Seems like sets are account-bound from my POV.

GR progress is account wide for same mode (normal/hardcore).

[SirCowdog]

Do you want to use WD bonuses on Barb? Does it even makes sense?

"Usable by class" =/= "bound to character". You can still swap sets between characters of same class.

You can even farm set for one class using different class. It doesn't drop as often as "native" set but still drops. You can even remove level requirements of new set and transfer it to level 1 character. Seems like sets are account-bound from my POV.

GR progress is account wide for same mode (normal/hardcore).

Like I said, we're already too far into character specific stuff with WoW. I'm in favor of more account-wide things. AP should be account wide IMO. So should reputation.

D3 has some good ideas, some of which we already see in Legion. I'm just saying that we don't need to go overboard with it.

[aziras]

If they made everything account-wide, they might as well remove the classes and allow characters to pick any spec they want. It seems that is really what people want - easy instant-action access to any spec that is FotM (or just that they are curious about).

I am in the process of taking my 4th character through the 100-110 journey. It is already boring as fuck. With the only real difference being the look of the mission hub and a single class campaign quest line every few levels.

I do it because I actually like playing the different classes and try to do as much as I can to shake up the levelling path to not be the same. But there is only so much variation you can do, and because you keep revisiting all the zones for WQs on the main, it never gets the "oh nice to be back here" moments going...

They botched up the alt experience. They know it, but there is nothing they can do to fix it good at this point.

I also play D3 and that experience is very different. Non-seasonal character progress is silly and I stopped doing that long ago. Seasonal has resets of everything and I tend to just play one class each season, then switch it up for the next one. Sort of the same way I try to play WoW. I plateau a character in WoW in about 2-3 months (tops). Then I start another one and have fun again. But the punishment is just crazy.

Personally I do not mind the fact that I have to re-do the current-expansion content over and over. What bothers me is that I have all these alts with various progress through the old content. Whichever was my main at the time has maxed reps and done all the quests, the others have nothing, often not even flight points.
It would be nice if we could somehow collapse old character progress and inherit it for new characters on the account.
Grinding TBC factions for profession recipes on the 11th alt seems a little crazy. Especially because a lot of those old reps are still locked behind daily quests/lockouts.

If you intent on juggling the 12 classes, you will very quickly end up with a VERY long list of old-content stuff you need to have in a daily routine.

It would be great if they added something that allowed an alt to merge their progress into the account when they complete the expansion. Example: When playing a character through TBC the character obtains some rep with the various factions. Upon hitting 70, the character gets the option of merging with the account-progress. If the account is already maxed on reps, the new character would simply copy those over. If some of the factions were not maxed, the new character's rep would be added to the pool.
As long as this is only for old content it is hardly a problem.

[Deleted]

Everything should be account-wide at this point imo.

Even gear levels.

[pmkaboo]

meh, replay value is overrated.
if there are enough things to do all the time and an endless progression system (much like ap + random legs that you can farm + tf gear) there is no real need to be replay-friendly.
even more when the content that you are farming is itself the content that you may want to replay.
i mean, why should i care about leveling a new character from 100 to 110 again, while the only thing i am doing at 110 are wq? what is the difference?
why they must "give the opportunity to replay heroic dungeons on alt" to a player who is farming m+10 all the time on the main?

the difference is that sometimes you want to kill the boars with an assault of furious slashes and other times you want to throw fireballs them.

[Deleted]

It's Blizzard's subtle way of saying "we fucking hate alts and if we could get away with doing away with them entirely we would"

Actually, it's more Blizzard's not-so-subtle way of saying "You want to play more than one class? Put effort into it and you can!". Which I think is perfectly fine.

I would guess that a majority share of people on this forum (or anywhere) that want to have "everything account-wide" would be the first to come to this forum (or anywhere) and complain that this expansion is boring because there is nothing to do.

What I really don't get is: When you leveled your main/first toon, you didn't have any issues farming artifact power even at lower AK, why does it suddenly become an issue when it's your alt/second/third/xth toon? If you are into alts, then you should not have an issue with playing it. If you have an issue with playing your alts, then you should not do it. Not that hard to understand, is it?

WoD did a number on people, making them unbelievably lazy. Everything was a handout and now this seems to be what people expect.

[Armourboy]

I would be happy if they even took something like Balance of Power and let you catch it up in LFR if you had done it on a main already. Rep is a pita and basically makes it worthless if your alts were used more for crafting. The thought of doing Suramar in full on multiple alts pretty much makes me want to stab babies. It felt endless the first time around, now with the added stuff, good lord.

Honor I could see at least giving you the talents, not the ranks so much, but wouldn't bother me either way tbh.

I've got no problem grinding things out if I need to, but certain things in this expansion are going to get ridiculous. If anything the way they currently have it set up is making me not play those characters I used to spend a ton of time on. I think I've managed to get one other character to 110 other than my main, and I don't even want to play it most of the time.

[Deleted]

suramar great.

in 7.1.5 im gonna mail my fresh 110s the lvl 20 knowledge book, wait 3 weeks for them to reach lvl 25, then do suramar and enjoy multiple quests that will literally give 1million AP as reward. between the occasional nightfallen emiisary and some of those account bound rep tokens, the rep gating isnt too bad.

[MasterHamster]

People have started to treat alts as their mains alter egos, in essence demanding that alts are never more than 1-2 weeks behind their mains. I'm not sure if this is a lingering psychological idea from MoP and WoD, but I can assume as such. Especially since you could have your alts ready for heroic HFC in 36 hours played in 6.2. Such a joke.

If anything, I think your highest Artifact Knowledge could be account wide, but they seem to be going a bit more reasonably paced catch up with the -5 level. Frankly I don't think it'll be a good feeling if you had AK25 and did 1 WQ on an alt and just filled 80% of your weapon. That doesn't feel like progression, that's just hammering traits without reading what they do.

But overall, no. We don't need more acc wide catch up mechanics. People call it the "alt-killer" because you're actually supposed to invest times in alts as well? Yes, re-doing Suramar can get old, but Blizzard has to be very careful unless they want a WoD repeat. You should always feel like there's something to do to progress your character in the world outside of raids, instances and order halls... and yes, that includes repeating faction storylines. But I have to say I am a bit surprised they haven't gone the MoP route of +100% acc rep tomes.

[Deleted]

Either way it works.

well why want the whole prestige system account wide, which is pointless and ruins the only pvp progress there is (or at least nobody suggested anything else), if you in the end just want the skin appearances account-wide? This is the same thing one of the blue posts talked about recently. Players suggesting fix instead of reporting where they think the problem is. Does prestige needs to be account wide? hell no. Skin appearances? now we're talking.