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

[Armourboy]

Which is it? Is WoW non alt friendly or is it Alt friendly. All you hear is its not alt friendly.

I've been playing since Vanilla, and the idea that everyone played one toon is bologna. The only people I knew that could get away with not having a healer/tank alt in major guilds were those already playing Tanks/healers. Granted most people didn't more than 1 or 2, but if you were hardcore, in many cases you were expected to roll one.

The only reason TBC seemed harder on alts was because the old Vanilla zones hadn't been adjusted yet and the attunments made it a pita. Once they dropped attunements you started seeing lots and lots more people playing on alts. Kara was an alt haven mid TBC.

Wrath and Cata opened the flood gates because things like leveling through PvP, zero attunements, easy heroics, and easy access to gear made them fun time wasters. LFR made it even more so.

MoP and all the rep grinds pretty much put a stopper on the alt parades, and I have leveled less alts this expansion than I did in TBC. Thats not all bad because I have found plenty to do on my mains, but when you have 10 85's you kind of want to get around to playing them some.

[Xeraxis]

Hey remember when you could only play one character across all servers in an MMO? No? Oh that's right because no MMO since UO has had that feature, not barring when EQ would only allow you one toon on a PvP server but you were still able to have multiple characters on other servers.

[Deleted]

Since the start of Pandaria I haven't touched my alts, and tbh... I probably won't have any reason to. Game is still pretty fun to me.

[Furiex]

Played a Holy paladin from the First day of WoWs release, my highest lvl alt, a lvl 19 hunter. I had no problem being a single character player. at all

[volrath50]

WoW has never really been alt-focused.

I've never really got the point of having a stupid number of alts. I see some people with like 8 90s, all of which have bad gear and such. I can understand having one or two alts, but I see little point in leveling 10 times and doing nothing but leveling again and again and again.

I've only ever really played one character at a time. I've occasionally got my 2 ex-mains to level cap, but I didn't play them once I did.

[Torunscar]

I would say that MoP is the most main-centric expansion since BC.

[Windfury]

I've played since release, and have had the same main since vanilla, but I've always had and enjoyed playing alts, from 3 level 60s in vanilla up to a full set in cata. I haven't touched anything but my main in Mists. I dearly want to play alts but simply haven't had time. I love tanking and really miss it. I hate how main focused the game is currently, and I really don't understand how people can possibly say the game is alt focused right now, to me it's the most main focused it's ever been, which is not a positive thing.

[Wazooty]

I want one class/char to care about, but no one is particularly satisfying...so I have 4.

Now, if I could be a draenei demon hunter.

Oh boy would that change.

[PrairieChicken]

Anti alt policy seriously killed raiding

[jonoy8]

wow came with 8 character slots so it was never about 1 character so not sure what you are referring to

[velde046]

And why is it hurting the game again? I cannot find the reason for the statement you make in the title.

Besides that, I don't mind really. I used to play RPG on my main and have a few alts when I did not want to RPG or anything but to be by myself. That was fun and easy really, nothing 'hurting'...

These days I lack the time to do RPG, but I still think it's doable having an RPG character and a few on the side...

[Justignoreme]

Do you remember good old times when you had only 1 character and you cared for him, loved and felt him?

no, I had 4 70s in BC which all had epic flying.

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.

Leveling was easy back then too, if dungeons took to long to get a group for people didn't bother doing them, raids were restricted to 1% of the playerbase who had excessive amounts of disposable time to throw away grinding attunements just to set foot in the raid. Now you can queue for a dungeon while questing, you don't need to assemble a group to quest through a story arc in a zone and raiding can be scheduled with around real world time schedules. These are improvements. As for achievements, all that did was grow the epeens of the hardcore crowd, which is the obvious segue of this post.

Sometimes you are even forced to have multiple alts, because of extra gold, achievments or even raiding.

Every raid leader worth their team would ask their team to have alts on standby to substitute for roles which may not be present due to RL interfering with schedules. Having alts to tap into numerous professions and not rely on a monopoly of a handful of players who have access to everything and charge whatever they want makes for a better market. Or do you think it's OK to pay 5000g for gems and enchants?

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.

No they aren't. They are about playing the game and enjoying it and all it has to offer...

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.

Thats a significant investment of time, say 3 weeks from 0-90 in a reasonable pace for every toon, thats 33 weeks for 11 classes, roughly 2/3 a year. You think it should take that long for simply one toon? If you want that, content (and balance) can't be held up in the endgame and ignored the entire journey. But WoW is about endgame and things like heirlooms and the like are only available after you've done the hardwork of leveling your first toon w/o them.

[Deleted]

Despite MoP being alt unfriendly, i find myself trying more and more to get to actualy leveling a third one to 90.

I just hate questing with a passion

[Aquamonkey]

In Vanilla, I only had 1 main at lvl 60 with a handful of alts in the 20-40 range. Vanilla was probably the most alt unfriendly time for WoW as it took forever to level just because mounts were fairly expensive. With the change to the mount system in 2.0, the game became a lot more alt friendly. In TBC, I had several lvl 70s. 3 of which I played frequently, raiding through BT on 2 of them. WotLK and Cata I had a handful of max lvl characters I raided on just like TBC. Though, by the end of Cata, I had 10 lvl 85s (1 of each class) in full DS normal gear because that shit was out for so long. MoP, I only have 1 max level, but that's par for me this early in the expansion.

[PetersenIII]

How many characters did u level in vanilla?

It could take weeks to get a character from 0 to top level... u clearly never played at that time...

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...achievement#81

Scroll all the way to the bottom. See those three different FoS for PvP ranks? And that's only the unique ranks I got (yeah, not bragging about the ranks, I don't PvP much), so if I had multiple [privates, it only shows up as one FoS. Still, obviously I never played during vanilla.

Weeks to level up a character to max level? Oh noes! Because Vanilla was only around for like a month, right?

Well u know as well as everyone else who played Vanilla that players with more than one character was a RARITY. Itdefinitely wasnt the norm.

Among my friends it was quite normal, thanks. As someone else said, your experience != everyone's experience, so kindly stop telling us our business.

[Dark_Spirit]

How dare blizzard make people have to raid for the best reward. And if they can't raid then they get to grind all day and night for valor items. If they raid they can just use valor to upgrade it dailys not needed.

I'd say the game is fine especially with the insane amount of loot dropped per boss kill unlike pre cata where bosses dropped 1-2 items.

I would say the game is working as intended 10man players struggling to clear all normals get plenty of dailys to grind to fill the gaps in gear.
Most people doing top 100 heroic raiding are almost done gearing to BIS for the first tier with 4 months to spare.

I must say though that first month of dallies compared to the expansions 18 month lifespan was just so terrible. Not like each faction didn't reward you with completely unique mounts or anything.

You pretty much missed my point.

[DocQuantum]

Was just having a somewhat related discussion with some guild mates the other day.

On the one hand, they've made leveling/gearing alts SO much easier: BoA gear, account-wide achieves, lower level requirements for flying, the new LFG dungeon system (and goody bag!), streamlined quest chains, increased MoP rep account-wide at Revered, etc. The list goes on and on.

On the other hand, I barely have time (between real life and a full raiding schedule) to do much of anything on my alts. When I log on for the day (after real life stuff, naturally), I essentially run through professions on alts, check my farm across my characters that have started planting one, run my Dominance Offensive dailies ("this close" to exalted; shouldn't be much longer)... and then have maybe an hour before raid. That hour could be used for leveling alts... or for pet battles, brawler's guild (which I've barely touched), PvP, etc.

At the end of Cata, I had an 85 of every class except warrior (who was lagging behind at 77). So far in MoP, I've leveled two of those to 90 and a monk to 87. My 'lock is sitting pretty (11 heroic raid bosses down, all factions except Dominance Offensive exalted, etc.)... but the alt 90 is sadly lacking on gear and reps, and the 87 is barely making any progress towards 90.

If I could just figure out how to give up sleep entirely, I think I could "catch up" in WoW...

[SamR]

I'm loving all the alt-friendly features of MoP.

The flip side is that there's a ton more to do now than there was in 4.3 where it was basically run 8 bosses in LFR each week so it's not as quick to "cycle through" all your alts. I'm at the point now where my first 2 characters have ilvls in the 480's so I don't have to do each LFR segment each week so I have more time to spend on my other alts.

[DeadmanWalking]

I am at the point now that I have all the best gear lfr has to offer and I just valor cap while waiting for my guild to get raid ready, which may never happen for all I know, but now I just valor cap every week and play my alt, which has blown through dailies rep grinds as if it was a wet paper bag. The alt system works just fine as it is.

Frankly I would rather have too much to do on my main than have so little to do that I have to level 4 alts just to keep busy for the whole week, AND I am a casual that plays one hour a day and 6 hours on friday.

[Eorayn]

I like having a few other characters to spend minor time on, but I love sticking to one character. That’s the reason I play a MMORPG. I possess the role of a digital me, in a different, exciting world. Progress might be the most important thing in a game. And in World of Warcraft, I am sad to say that it has vanished slightly.