main character versus alts

[Vaalyn]

As we get ready for Firelands and the new dailies/raids, I have a question concerning main characters versus alts.
Is there a large number of people that only focus on their mains? or do most people run a main and 1 or more alts?
Finding it harder and harder to keep up with my alts as the amount of time required to level and gear them is taking away from my personal life. I have considered putting all my alts on hold and only focusing on my main from here on out, but want to find out if there is some "magic" secret that people use to maintain more then one character.
Right now I have only been playing my main during the week, and occasionally running my alts on weekends where time permits.
Interested in getting your opinions on mains versus alts.

[Azerate]

In cata I only leveled my alts did some professions etc. Never raided anything with them, takes too much time now. In icc raided with like 5 alts because it was so easy

[Téuntjûh]

Yeah, was playing with main+ multiple alts in WotLK.
Now I find cata to boring and really cba to play my alts anymore.
Might pick some up with dailies in 4.2

[Thage]

I try to strike a balance, because I had altitis pretty bad during Wrath and the Cata beta, when I was rolling a bunch of the new race/class combinations to check out Newzeroth.

[Deleted]

i would like to do some pug raid with my alts but the pugging is only for the thrash...

[tacoloco]

Guild raids on my main (when my RL time constraints allow)
Pug or guild alt raids on an alt (as I only have one raid ready alt).

[SheepHunter]

I only have one level 85 and it will stay like that becouse I don't wanna do all the stuff again on another char, like achievements.

[Coldkil]

I'll focus on my main, then when i've finished with it (raiding only) then i'll paly with alt.

[Delaios]

I have six characters at 85. I only raid with one of them (main). All but one alt aren't even geared enough to enter heroics. The alt that does is at 345 at the moment, so I can't enter Zandalari heroics yet. I've got one equipment slot that's proving hard to replace (ranged slot for my DPS warrior).
All characters have their professions maxed, but I doubt I'll spend a lot of time on most of them apart from some farming. I might start doing the Firelands dailies on my "geared" alt (and my main of course). I might even get my alt a tanking spec so I can farm some satchels.

In WotLK I had four characters at 80 eventually. I raided with three of those. My main stepped out of quite a few raids in my old guild to be replaced with an alt to gear those up. I tanked/healed quite a few heroics on my tankadin/healadin during Wrath. He's now rotting away with a 320-ish gear level retribution set and no off-set gear.

[fords42]

I'm an altoholic and currently have four characters at 85. However, I'm finding they are too much of a timesink right now so am taking it easy until 4.2 when it'll be a lot easier to get them geared.

[aeser]

i have 4 85's and keep telling myself i should only play my main. i always get further in the game when i focus on my main i just get bored with only playing 1 classes mechanics so the lure of my alts draws my attention and i never get anywhere.

it's not even the leveling that sucks but gearing them all out feels like banging my head against a wall, and i'd like to play this game less, not more, so i really need to just be happy with my main and go do other things when i get bored with it.

like whenever you think of any big name/well known pvp'er or raider, almost none of them are known for playing more than 1 toon. there's probably a good reason for that.

[Vaalyn]

i have 4 85's and keep telling myself i should only play my main. i always get further in the game when i focus on my main i just get bored with only playing 1 classes mechanics so the lure of my alts draws my attention and i never get anywhere.

it's not even the leveling that sucks but gearing them all out feels like banging my head against a wall, and i'd like to play this game less, not more, so i really need to just be happy with my main and go do other things when i get bored with it.

like whenever you think of any big name/well known pvp'er or raider, almost none of them are known for playing more than 1 toon. there's probably a good reason for that.

I think you have summarized my current frustration concerning alts.

1: I want to progress and see as much as the game as possible. Feeling like focusing on more then 1 character is preventing me from doing this.

2: I want to play less then I currently do - more of a quality versus quantity. (I currently have 6 85's myself)

3: I want to be known for the main class I play - more of a specialist over a jack-of-all trades.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to just delete all my alts to remove the temptation from playing them (although I could never do this at this point). If I decide to pick up SWTOR, I only plan on having a single character to avoid this in the future.

[aeser]

I think you have summarized my current frustration concerning alts.

1: I want to progress and see as much as the game as possible. Feeling like focusing on more then 1 character is preventing me from doing this.

2: I want to play less then I currently do - more of a quality versus quantity. (I currently have 6 85's myself)

3: I want to be known for the main class I play - more of a specialist over a jack-of-all trades.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to just delete all my alts to remove the temptation from playing them (although I could never do this at this point). If I decide to pick up SWTOR, I only plan on having a single character to avoid this in the future.

yep

i can justify having 1 alt, something to break the monotony, say you're in an excruciating bg or random dungeon or whatever you can leave without caring about deserter because you can hop on an alt and run stuff on that. but more than 2 is kind of insane i think. when you sit down and realistically think of what it would take to actually get anything out of all those characters (how much gearing goes into them before they become halfway useful, etc.) it seems like a dumb endeavor. WoW can make you feel like you can be everywhere at once able to do everything with alts but in reality, no, takes way too much time, and realistically how awesome can you get at EVERY class? i'm thinking of deleting my mage and druid now and only playing my warrior main and rogue alt. i suck at mage and only have a druid for healing (i don't particularly care about healing just thought i'd try it out, it's pretty much nothing i'd ever take seriously, just a novelty, and i don't see myself ever going anywhere with it anyway). i pretty much just keep my mage around to port people places for money.

[Kazzyku]

In Vanilla and BC I only had mains, for the most part. In Vanilla I exclusively played my rogue until my PvP team quit. I leveled up a shaman alt and eventually made it my main and shelved my rogue until they opened up server x-fers. Even then, I found myself mainly playing my Shaman. By the end of BC, I had a few 70 characters but really only focused one.

By the end of LK, I did my best to gear up all of my characters equally, I had six 85s. My mains shifted a lot, at first as my druid in Naxx, then my Shaman in Ulduar, then my Paladin in ICC through hardmodes.

I tried making my paladin my main in Cata, and it's the only character I've raided on. I didn't particularly enjoy PvE heroics or PvP BGs/Arenas on it so I leveled some alts, but find myself not really trying to gear up or focus on any characters anymore. I pretty much just get them to 85, buy some honor gear, cap my points but not really try to get everything on them. I find more fun in leveling and low-level BGs now.

[Lillah]

The secret is lots and lots of free time. I have several alts at 85 myself but they're all in fairly poor shape with exception to one of the alts.

The only way for a person to have 3+ very well geared alts is to devote an unhealthy amount of time to playing. (I'm pretty guilty of this too but much of my time is spent idling so I don't have many chars to show for it...)

[Dyzon]

In Vanilla and BC I was a main only type of person. Now I have a decent balance, I have a main and two alts I play pretty religiously. I've allowed myself to be ok with missing some things on my alts, such as mounts, or pets, and having slightly lower gear - and I essentially don't do secondary professions on them (other than FA) unless they were already high level. I'm ok with my alts having less factions at exalted and not doing dailies. I forsee this being a huge problem in 4.2 though with all the dailies being a huge part of character progression (with all the gear and recipes associated with them). I'm not looking forward to doing a set of dailies on 3 different toons at all. As far as raiding goes, I raid on my main, and on off nights I try to pug my alts - at the very least I'll get them BH groups. All in all I'm pretty happy with being able to gear my alts through VP and ZA/ZG to have them ready for a change of pace, more professions, or if the raid needs something different. It's far easier than it was in the past to keep a couple of alts geared and raid ready.

[aeser]

i bit the bullet and deleted my mage and druid and now only have my original main warrior and rogue alt. no more madness. well, some madness i guess, just not as much.