Wow, you must be some sort of crazy naturally gifted power-leveler. Things are easy to do, they never were hard in WoW. They just take time.
I estimate the investment in a main for Legion to about 70-80 hours until you run out of things to do (except for "infinite" things raids and mythic+) and about 30-40 per alt until you are at a decent starting point to do PvE content.
That still leaves you with 20-30 hours of catch up after leveling without including the gated content. You can level in a weekend form 100 to 110, but it takes almost 2 weeks to finish you class hall order, 2 months for nighfallen, 4 months for AP without catch up mechanics and so on.
There is so much fricking things to do that I didn't have time yet to unlock Obliterum.
I think Blizzard gets it wrong. I think that Wow, today, only appeals mostly for players which had a lot of experience with Wow in the past. I think that older players are more numerous than fresh people, because it is very hard to get random new players in Wow on its 7th version and with its (unfair) reputation.
I don't think that veterans are engaged by time gated sinks and having to repeat the unfun parts of progression on alts (things like rep) and not focus on the fun part or progression (dungeons, raids, and PvP). I think WoW could enhance retention by focusing on getting alts faster back into the game and making it intentionally so that you don't have to grind things out more than once. This goes of course only for relatively high level characters, like the bunch of 100 you have from WoD. Fresh level 1 are fair game.
This criticism is particularly baffling. No one is complaining about having things to do. It would just be more alt friendly if the result of finishing those things was account wide. From this persoective even WoD, with little worth doing was alt unfriendly. I for one could not stomach round 2 of garrisonville.
As I see it, they complain that it is alt-unfriendly because there is too much to do.
In fact, leveling an alt without worrying of doing other things, is quite smooth and steady.
I find it really alt-friendly. Then again, I don't worry about the content more than to be prepared for raiding. If you want that for your alt, then you have to do the work for it too.
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
Was WoD really alt-unfriendly though? Sure, in the beginning, you had to do a lot of garrisons. But was it alt unfriendly for a raider who let's say willingly chose to ignore the legendary, got his 3 crafted pieces and apexis and reached the point where all he wanted/needed to do is progress further in raids?
This is so weird to me. Why would you feel the need to all this on your alt unless you plan on raiding mythic with it? You really don't actually NEED to do all this stuff, thats something you put on yourself. I have 2 alts at 110 and they're basically sitting in their order hall and gathering artifact knowledge. The time-gated order hall campaign is actually a good thing because you can just get em out on the mission and log your main. You don't need to do Suramar either, you will get the 2 dungeons in 7.1.
WoD was a shit expansion with no content and nothing to do than sit in your garrison, do you want to play WoD again? Think back to Cata/MoP, you had to grind dailys there too (you know WQs are just fancy dailys right?).
What the guy above said x2.
Basically people have f-ed up definitions of main/alt.
Everytime I read these complaints about alt-unfriendlyness it always comes from some guy who expects to have 11 alts all mythic raid geared, professions maxed and 5 legendaries in the bags. (that was hiperbole if you didnt get it...)
Last edited by mmoc19ea095b35; 2016-10-24 at 11:38 AM.
I can understand why people bitch about changing specs is a pain in the arse,
I don't understand why alts are, right now, the catch up mechanism is at work so when you do decide to play it, it'll be quicker, I'm pretty sure in a blue they said they were going to improve it again in future
Personally, I started legion two weeks after launch. Got my death knight up to 110, got it ready for en normal in less than two weeks, with nearly 2 gold traits. At the same time I've level'd a dh to 108. After those two weeks a friend asked me to go back to my old server and join a raid team. The catch? I had to make a level 1 shaman and level it to 110 ASAP. Luckily I had a boost, so in 24 hours I hit 60 and used the boost. That was just over 3/4 weeks ago. This shaman is now over 2/3 done on her artifact (granted some people are much more ahead) 855 ilvl and progressing in heroic difficulty, nearly all her reps for legion are revered, the wardens being the furthest away at just under honoured. Thing is, I log on every day for my WQs for the cache and to raid, that's about a total of 10 hours a week? I spend more time than that on over watch.
What I'm getting across is, if you manage your time properly, there's no reason you can't have one or two decent alts on the run. Hell IM about to start another for the guild as a back up healer
In WoD I had 11 Horde characters and 1 Alliance character at level 100, ran Ashran on every single one of them for a couple days each and got full rare gear with 3-4 epic pieces, of gear that was at that moment the best possible level (700 rare, 715 epic IIRC.) I also maxed main professions on all of them, and did all of this with very, very little effort. I did not have them all at 90 before WoD either. Leveling from 90 to 100 took mere hours per character flying around collecting treasures.
I know stuff is going to get much easier towards the end of this expansion, but if I were to try and level all my characters to 110 now, plus try and get like...ilvl 850 gear, it would take forever for just a full stable of 12 Horde, and I'm going on five 100+ Alliance now as well. Plus, leveling professions would be a complete nonstarter, at least to max, not that they necessarily need to be maxed, other than for engineering for the bling mode.
So... Yeaaaaah. Anyone who claims this expansion is as alt-friendly as the ones before has no idea what it is to be a true altoholic in this game.
If skipped, yes. But out of all those 3 things, only one is a skip, and even that one only because I never got my legendary and I'm not sure if you can get it without garrison missions.
First, there was crafting. That was not skip. While I hated the gating of crafting as a principle, it was not a problem. Getting your 3 pieces was easy enough. You did not skip it, but for the duration of getting those pieces you kind of ahd to log in daily and do garrisons, but after you were done, that was it.
Apexis grind was one of the laziest grinds ever (not counting pre Bc stuff) and very on the nose and unapologetic: fill up this bar. But, apexis was fairly useless. I wore like 1 to 3 pieces and quickly out geared them. After about 50% progress in the first raid, do you actually needed apexis for anything? So apexis was not skiped, but taken care of early and easy.
Now, in legion, you need to grind AP if you don't just wait out the emissary stuff. And if you wait for it, by the time you have decent AP, all other people on the server are done with the content and thinking of unsubing. So you need to do it and do it fast.
You need to progress with the nighfallen because you fear that 7.1 or 7.2 or whatever will need exalted status. I'm quite curious to see what the requirements for those "9 weeks of story" are in 7.1.
So, on paper, it feels that legion is a bit more alt-unfriendly. But the stuff you must do now is more involved and story driven, so it psychologically feels that Legion much is more alt unfriendly.
What feels more involved: use an ad-don to send and army of minions on quests, fill up a bar of apexis or travels all around the world, do random quests for rep and progress though a linear zone with heavy story (for a rep grind).
And this goes only in the scenario where you are happy with your main and want to change stuff up with an alt. I'm am very unhappy with my main and want a new main. I think my new boosted character into which I have invested all my time in Legion is compromised and probably can't be salvaged. In order to properly identify with my new main, I need to properly go though the progression, so I can't super powerlevel stuff and skip steps.
Of course. Which is why i said that it's something you put on yourself. There's really no need at all to do AP WQs until you have higher AK. And you can play your main and just gather AK until its a high level and when you then play it you'll get artifact traits in a matter of hours. And the other stuff, i don't even do daily heroic on my main anymore, what's the point? You can't call it an ALT if you're doing everything you do on your main, then its just a 2nd main.
My paladin alt is at AK 8 and got 19 traits, i've done 2-3 Suramar questlines and 3-4 mythics. And i've never felt like it's too much. The way you guys see an alt will burn you out no matter what content is out.
Point a) you shuold quote whole post and not the "funny / ironic" part of it.
Point b) this is a thread for the reason Legion is alt-unfriendly, not how much Legion is time gated.
Point c) I agree with you, time gating is a bit too much for alts, specially with class order campaign (looking at the five 12hour quests mostly).
Taking from your post it seems that the less effort you put into your alts the more alt-friendly the expansion is. Which seems a bit non-sensical... If you don't want to play (spend time & effort) on your alts, why are you bothering making alts at all...
So for you, ideally once you have one 110 main all your alts should automatically be 110 right? I mean... leveling is grindy and boring, don't want to repeat that.
Also, all your main's reputations should be mirrored to your alts too. Noone wants to grind reputations on multiple alts!
And ofcourse gear... all your alts should automagically have the same ilvl than your main. (And also be on the same stage of class order hall / campaign).
There... 1 main, 11 alts. Zero effort. Ideal? Would that be a game you would want to play?
Edit: You know what... I just had the best idea ever... why don't we remove alts altogether and give players free unlimited class changes! So you level once, play any class you want at max level with the same ilvl! Leveled a warrior but feel like healing? No problem, class change to priest, presto-change-o... you can heal!
Last edited by mmoc19ea095b35; 2016-10-24 at 11:55 AM.