WoW being an alt focused mmo now hurts the game most.

[Moohorn]

Do you remember good old times when you had only 1 character and you cared for him, loved and felt him? These were the true mmorpg times. Today things are different, leveling is so quick and easy, entry point for dungens and raids is so low, BoA items and account wide achievments. Sometimes you are even forced to have multiple alts, because of extra gold, achievments or even raiding. This pretty much ruing whole RPG part of the game. You know the letter R - Role, you should just pick one and stick to it, thats what RPGs are about. Everytime I start an RPG game, I spend a good portion of time at character creation screen. Yes I know, we always create multiple alts even in classic RPG games, but you usually finish the game wih just one, maybe two characters, leaving others with very low levels, unless you are hardcore player of course. In WoW you can have easily top level of every class in a few weeks.

Honestly, While leveling may be easier, gearing for end game content is more difficult and painstaking now than its ever been. Rep barriers, slow vp gain (even with first maxing vp on one character first), no VP purchasable BoE items ala Wrath/Cata.

In fact there've been blue posts recently about making MoP MORE alt friendly as they realize it's an issue.

[Pull My Finger]

Do you remember good old times when you had only 1 character and you cared for him, loved and felt him? These were the true mmorpg times. Today things are different, leveling is so quick and easy, entry point for dungens and raids is so low, BoA items and account wide achievments. Sometimes you are even forced to have multiple alts, because of extra gold, achievments or even raiding. This pretty much ruing whole RPG part of the game. You know the letter R - Role, you should just pick one and stick to it, thats what RPGs are about. Everytime I start an RPG game, I spend a good portion of time at character creation screen. Yes I know, we always create multiple alts even in classic RPG games, but you usually finish the game wih just one, maybe two characters, leaving others with very low levels, unless you are hardcore player of course. In WoW you can have easily top level of every class in a few weeks.

Couldn't think of anything else to whine about today?

I don't see what's stopping you from sticking to your one character and "loving and feeling" him. That's a very creepy choice of words, by the way.

Oh yeah, remember the times when PONG was new? All you had was this one black screen you played in front of. You'd spend so much time looking at this blank, black space that you knew every single corner of it, you cared for it, lost yourself in it, it became your home.

Then came modern games like Space Invaders where you suddenly had all these colors, and then stuff like Super Mario Bros. and the backgrounds changed in every level and that totally ruined the true gaming times.

[Moinaldo]

WTF.... MOP is very far from being alt focused... I will never grind MOP reputations on my alts... never...

[Vargur]

MoP is extremely anti-alt, indeed. However I don't see the "WoW being alt focused" bit, never did. Just because you did, doesn't make it true.

[Rotted]

I agree and disagree with some of what you saying,

for example heirlooms, I think need to be reworked so they only grant exp not bonus stats,

A pally 26 took me on 27 mistweaver, 26 rogue and a 27 frost mage, now we were all in green quest gear as it was a new server, he was in full looms, he almost killed us took us ages to down him,

I think 85-90 is a nice trek leveling wise, if I work solid on leveling, it takes me about a week to go from 85-90, if I do it casually, then it took me 3 weeks to do my DK, which I think is an okay number,

I hate wrath zones, and I hate some tbc zones for leveling, but at the same time it goes to quick, hellfire, with doing each instance once, and all the quests, will get you from 60-64 (with looms and some rest) now back in tbc, that would maybe just get you to 61 maybe a bit over,

I hate that lower dungeons have become easy and a clothie can tank them, I remember back on my first character, a pally, I had a mix talent choice of dps, prot and a couple of points in holy, and I went into stocks to tank it, (did have a shield and sword ) and I got decimated by the mobs, my cousin went in alone for shits and giggles at 26 I think it was, and the first mob he pulled, nuked him down in 2 seconds flat and his gear went from fine to all red, and cost him what little silver he had to repair,

Now that was an epic memory from when we first started,

I also hate that locked exp bgs are separate, and even worse in AV I hate how easy its become especially for giving people exp as a random, dont get me wrong adding 600 reinforcements was a good idea, but making it so dammed easy to get to drek / general is ott, I remeber back at 60, taking the ibgy and fighting for hours pushing forwards,

[Leonard McCoy]

MoP is the LEAST alt friendly expansion in recent memory and it's taking it's toll on all aspects of the game. I mean at one point if we needed to fill rolls in a raid I could jump on a healer or a dps or whatever we needed. I lvld my warrior and realized what a huge mistake I made because he couldn't heal and fill the roll we needed.

[Rotted]

Honestly, While leveling may be easier, gearing for end game content is more difficult and painstaking now than its ever been. Rep barriers, slow vp gain (even with first maxing vp on one character first), no VP purchasable BoE items ala Wrath/Cata.

In fact there've been blue posts recently about making MoP MORE alt friendly as they realize it's an issue.

I agree with you that gearing is harder (although I agree with that) Rep barriers are a pain in the arse because theres that many all at once, but again I welcome it, VP gear to buy I'm more pissed we dont have it because I made gold that way, but slow gaining VP? I have to disagree with this, I hit 90 on my horde priest, and I hit the cap within a few days from doing scenarios to get into heroics, and heroic to get into the first wing of LFR, and I even said to my mates, what the hell that didn't take to long, like 3 days, and thats without her doing dailies as well

---------- Post added 2012-12-16 at 01:56 PM ----------

MoP is the LEAST alt friendly expansion in recent memory and it's taking it's toll on all aspects of the game. I mean at one point if we needed to fill rolls in a raid I could jump on a healer or a dps or whatever we needed. I lvld my warrior and realized what a huge mistake I made because he couldn't heal and fill the roll we needed.

I happen to think its good, I don't think that every raider should be able to go, "oh were missing a healer tonight, Ill log the druid" then another player goes "Oh I can go a priest instead" its one thing thats killing the game, also as you mentioned with your warrior it was a mistake, back in tbc it took that long to level a character, that you'd know well before you hit 70 if you liked the character or not,

[Johnkie]

Maybe he just means that wow has lost its character flair, they are not as interresting as they once were, mostly because you can level one in no time.
The journey is not fun anymore. Maybe were just tired of the game, or maybe were just tired of what blizzard have let the game become after they joined Activision. After that it felt like blizzard became about the monetary aspect of the game, rather then their old RPG style.
Alot didnt play old RBG games i reckon, or the player base didnt grow up with thoose sorta games.
But they were incredible fun, and it stimulated your IQ and senses. I just dont feel wow does that to me anymore.
Maybe its just because im bored of it, who knows.

[Ethes]

I agree and disagree with some of what you saying,

for example heirlooms, I think need to be reworked so they only grant exp not bonus stats,

A pally 26 took me on 27 mistweaver, 26 rogue and a 27 frost mage, now we were all in green quest gear as it was a new server, he was in full looms, he almost killed us took us ages to down him,

I think 85-90 is a nice trek leveling wise, if I work solid on leveling, it takes me about a week to go from 85-90, if I do it casually, then it took me 3 weeks to do my DK, which I think is an okay number,

I hate wrath zones, and I hate some tbc zones for leveling, but at the same time it goes to quick, hellfire, with doing each instance once, and all the quests, will get you from 60-64 (with looms and some rest) now back in tbc, that would maybe just get you to 61 maybe a bit over,

I hate that lower dungeons have become easy and a clothie can tank them, I remember back on my first character, a pally, I had a mix talent choice of dps, prot and a couple of points in holy, and I went into stocks to tank it, (did have a shield and sword ) and I got decimated by the mobs, my cousin went in alone for shits and giggles at 26 I think it was, and the first mob he pulled, nuked him down in 2 seconds flat and his gear went from fine to all red, and cost him what little silver he had to repair,

Now that was an epic memory from when we first started,

I also hate that locked exp bgs are separate, and even worse in AV I hate how easy its become especially for giving people exp as a random, dont get me wrong adding 600 reinforcements was a good idea, but making it so dammed easy to get to drek / general is ott, I remeber back at 60, taking the ibgy and fighting for hours pushing forwards,

I agree very much with what you're saying. The thing that heirlooms do in combination with new talents and spells is pretty much making the whole leveling experience (including dungeons at that level) useless. Sure, you shouldn't whipe 25 times on the same boss in DM, but having no healer (he's either a sleep, texting or dpssing) and every idiot pull everything without consequence is booring. Which is basically what the whole leveling experience from 1 to 85 has become, however as we need to go all the way to 90 nowadays I'm thankful for the reduced XP amounts.

As for MoP, not the most alt-unfriendly part of the game ever, but definitly not particually friendly.

[yjmark]

Limiting to a single play style is the worst thing Blizz can do to the game. Variety is what keeps the game alive. Monotony would have killed it years ago.

Monotony was ok in vanilla because the game was still new. Now that people have played it for so long, it would just make the game boring.

[Energy]

WoW being "pvp"-focused mmo now hurts the game most.
In couple with stupid Russian realm transfers, where PvE realms was available for migration only sort time at the beginning. Now Blizzard forces us to feed stupid griefers. I wish i can xfer to PvE realm, but i cant leave guild and people.
Alts never was a problem. If you have time for an alt, why not? However i never can understand people who focuses on alts over other game goods, such as organised pvp and raids.

[TanksBosses]

No, many people I knew had 2-3 60s even more in Vanilla. Required for raiding.

Alts aren't mandatory, and the game is more focused on endgame then anything else.

Also, don't make a giant wall. Please and thank you.

You called his OP a 'giant wall' ? Wow i didn't think it was that long at all. Complete with the snarky 'please and thank you' (as if your opinion on what a 'giant wall' is means anything). I didn't find his post to be that at all.

[PBitt]

I was an altholic the last 3 expansions, I had one of each class at 85 at MoP launch....now I can hardly care beyond their professions, there is more than enough to keep you busy on one character and I play to raid, not to level and gear up alts and never use them to raid, which is what I always did. If Blizzard never intended people to have alts, they never would have given us 10 (and now 11) character slots on a realm. And I've had three or more max level characters since late TBC, which is when I started playing. That being said, it's not an alt focused MMO....Cata really caused a lot of people to level alts because it sucked and there was nothing else to do for those that still wanted to play. It's still an alt-friendly MMO perhaps, but significantly less so with the grinding progression MoP introduced that makes you work for getting your alts up to par with your main, which has never really been the case, not even in TBC.

[Azrile]

Do you remember good old times when you had only 1 character and you cared for him, loved and felt him? These were the true mmorpg times. Today things are different, leveling is so quick and easy, entry point for dungens and raids is so low, BoA items and account wide achievments. Sometimes you are even forced to have multiple alts, because of extra gold, achievments or even raiding. This pretty much ruing whole RPG part of the game. You know the letter R - Role, you should just pick one and stick to it, thats what RPGs are about. Everytime I start an RPG game, I spend a good portion of time at character creation screen. Yes I know, we always create multiple alts even in classic RPG games, but you usually finish the game wih just one, maybe two characters, leaving others with very low levels, unless you are hardcore player of course. In WoW you can have easily top level of every class in a few weeks.

I disagree a bit. Back in Vanilla, I had 10 characters, all leveling at different speeds, played when I felt like playing that class. But where you are correct is that I KNEW I had 1 character for progression, I had a clear main and I ´understood´ that my alts would never have great gear or be raiding. That is the part that has changed. Since Wotlk, most players feel their alts should at least be raid ready. There was a thread recently where a player was complaining because his alt, who dinged 90 last week, was not able to hit the ilvl requirement to do terrace.

Blizzard really created this situation ( I won´t call it a problem).. As the devs have said, if you don´t give players enough content at endgame, of course they will make alts.. Plus with Cata redoing the zones, and easy heirlooms, it made alts even more attractive. Now they launch an expansion with a ton of content for your mains, and people feel slighted because they can´t keep their alts up on progression. Double edged sword. I don´t have a problem with it because I have quickly gone back to Vanilla mentality where my main will be BIS.. I will have a healer who does LFR and heroics when they have CTA.. and then I will have 9 other characters who get to 90 and will be a quest gear ilvl probably the whole expansion.

[Shakari]

Do you remember good old times when you had only 1 character and you cared for him, loved and felt him? These were the true mmorpg times. Today things are different, leveling is so quick and easy, entry point for dungens and raids is so low, BoA items and account wide achievments. Sometimes you are even forced to have multiple alts, because of extra gold, achievments or even raiding. This pretty much ruing whole RPG part of the game. You know the letter R - Role, you should just pick one and stick to it, thats what RPGs are about. Everytime I start an RPG game, I spend a good portion of time at character creation screen. Yes I know, we always create multiple alts even in classic RPG games, but you usually finish the game wih just one, maybe two characters, leaving others with very low levels, unless you are hardcore player of course. In WoW you can have easily top level of every class in a few weeks.

Nope never was a time like that in wow, infact never known a mmo like that, care and loved one char umm how odd, I do think this a case of rose tinted glasses going on if you think that. Never knew anyone who had just one char I never did either.

Having multiple chars adds to the game not detracts, they bring no realistic negative points I can think of.

And outside of the really old mmo's before wow, none since has chars that are hard to lvl to the cap, people simply do not want an endless grind any more.

You play how you wish to 1 or 2 chars but I would say your in the vast minority who actually find that fun.

[bionics]

WoW being "pvp"-focused mmo now hurts the game most.
In couple with stupid Russian realm transfers, where PvE realms was available for migration only sort time at the beginning. Now Blizzard forces us to feed stupid griefers. I wish i can xfer to PvE realm, but i cant leave guild and people.
Alts never was a problem. If you have time for an alt, why not? However i never can understand people who focuses on alts over other game goods, such as organised pvp and raids.

WoW is most certainly not PVP-centric. How are the "griefers" hurting you besides in a few certain locales for leveling?

[Atherions]

I do agree that leveling takes no time these days, but there is so much crap to do when you reach max level so if you are a working human being you wont have time for multiple mains. I myself have a warrior main and a healer monk i leveled in like 1 1/2 day. But there are just so many dailies and other stuff to do on my warrior that i CBA to do it again on my monk. I only troll around in the 1600 2s bracket on my healer monk with crap gear together with friends, just for the lulz

[Skulli]

As people mentioned, what changed over time is that people have (many) alts with raid gear.
Sure there were people that had alts in raid gear, because they took them into main runs or they maid own alt runs but that wasnt that common since most people
had enough to do with their own char.
I prefer that approach with focusing on one char. Put enough content into the game that you dont need to play alts because you are bored.

[Scorp969]

mop is not alt friendly becouse of all those daily q
in cata i was raiding with 6chars full hc ds now i have only 2 active mains and doing daily only on one of them

[Woceip]

It's funny how OP talks about the R in RPG. Let's think about that for a second. Role Playing Game, originally the pen and paper D&D, which wow essentially is the same thing except all the dice rolls are made for us and the results levied in realtime with the campaign laid out by a cast of hundreds rather than a single DM.

Do you have any friggin' clue how many people have tons of different characters? Hell, character dies? New character. I've known people to play two characters IN THE SAME CAMPAIGN.

Your description of 'classic RPG' makes me think of Diablo. That kind of destroys your credibility with me even more.