Everything BOP should be BOA

[pahbi]

I'm not sure how this would even work?

If I run a mythic on my warrior and a sword drops, unless I have a sword using alt, it really doesn't help that its BOA.

Frankly, I would replace most drops except raid drops with a bind on account currency so folks can just buy gear. I think we're all grown up enough to save and plan for the things we want.

[btlcryct]

There isn't a single downfall to this, and if nothing else, would keep people subbed longer to play alts since they could now use things which have been BoP since Wrath, and crafted items which are BoP could now be sold to the public, or even to alts. Worst case scenario, make it all BoA on that specific server.

There is absolutely a downside to this. Say goodbye to 90% of the population ever trading anything to you again from raid/dungeon drops, because "I'm gonna sent it to my xxx alt."

Now, if it was BoA rep gear you could buy from rep vendors and such on your main and then send to an alt, I'd be fine with that. Because you aren't taking something from someone else. Yes, it was your drop in the raid/dungeon, but if you're part of a progression group, you don't want people keeping gear for alts they'll play once a month or something when it would be more beneficial for your raid/M+ team.

[Biomega]

And people raiding on a class that they enjoy raiding on to gear up their other classes that they don't enjoy raiding on is bad... how? GW2 let's you do it. I don't see a problem here.

That's because you're only looking at the good side of it. Not the massive and pervasive downsides. Like, say, everyone hoarding gear to use themselves rather than trading it to other people. Or average ilvl skyrocketing and massively raising expectations for group content. Or people's standards ballooning to the point where no good guild will take anyone who doesn't run 5+ funnel alts and attends their 20 weekly funnel runs. And so on.

It'd devolve into a massive clown fiesta in no time flat.

Not every game works the same, and things that work in one game won't automatically work or work the same in another game.

[FelPlague]

week 1 do +15 on 14 alts, be full BIS week 1.
Yeah sure I do love being fucking forced to play alts in order to be able to keep up.

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There is absolutely a downside to this. Say goodbye to 90% of the population ever trading anything to you again from raid/dungeon drops, because "I'm gonna sent it to my xxx alt."

Now, if it was BoA rep gear you could buy from rep vendors and such on your main and then send to an alt, I'd be fine with that. Because you aren't taking something from someone else. Yes, it was your drop in the raid/dungeon, but if you're part of a progression group, you don't want people keeping gear for alts they'll play once a month or something when it would be more beneficial for your raid/M+ team.

Lol this too

"Oh shit my BIS sword just dropped and no one here is my class sick!"
*Literally EVERYONE in the raid rolls need*
"i need it for my paladin alt who is currently level 12, but i will totally have max level by next week"

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That's because you're only looking at the good side of it. Not the massive and pervasive downsides. Like, say, everyone hoarding gear to use themselves rather than trading it to other people. Or average ilvl skyrocketing and massively raising expectations for group content. Or people's standards ballooning to the point where no good guild will take anyone who doesn't run 5+ funnel alts and attends their 20 weekly funnel runs. And so on.

It'd devolve into a massive clown fiesta in no time flat.

Not every game works the same, and things that work in one game won't automatically work or work the same in another game.

This ^ Everyone begs for everything being account wide, but then forget what that actually entails, for example rep being account wide.
Dragonflight does the smart thing, makes the rewards account wide, but not the rep itself, but people still demand it, even though it will make the most efficinet rep grinding method to level 50 alts through dragonflight week 1 and then be done with all the reps.

[ro9ue]

ESO does it and its amazing.

[SaucyThighs]

It's very relevant here to look at the "Quality of Life (QoL)" idea you bring up. Having more stuff, and fewer limitations, often doesn't mean a better experience. Your characters having more easily obtained gear, not needing to do any content twice, doesn't mean you'll have more fun.

*skip to b) if you want for the part where I agree and am more constructive.

a) Isn't progressing up the ladder in the order it's designed, the pace it's designed, the difficult it's designed, the game itself? What's the benefit of skipping over that experience? To get to the end? To do the content you just did 5 minutes ago on your main but now you're all caught up on your alt and can do it again? If doing that again on your alt is fun then why isn't doing it from the start?

It's not better to have gear, to see bosses die, to have check boxes filled than to not. It's all about exploring, overcoming challenges, becoming more as a player. That's where all the fun is, and the rewards just show you your own growth (they are not the growth itself). So unless this adds to the opportunity you have to play the game, rather than just skip over the game, it won't be more fun to have things.

I get what you mean about "you've already earned it" but the challenging experience of earning something doesn't translate 1 for 1 like that. If you're level 60 and you stomp a level 40 dungeon, that required nothing new from you at all as a player. On your alt, you could have had the experience of having that challenge at level 40, in an exciting new way on a new character, and enjoying the rewards appropriate to that challenge. Instead you skipped over that part of the game, and now you have more purple pixels but didn't play the game more so these new pixels are kind of meaningless. Random trash drops in a 5 man you didn't even realize are in your bag now replace an entire gameplay loop you could have enjoyed.

It's sort of like, you meet a girl or someone you're into... you spend a year together and do all these things. It gets a little boring and you both move on. Time for something new (maybe a new character?). So you meet a new girl and... do you expect to be just as far along with this one as you were with the first one? But come on, "I already went through all that stuff. I already got to 1st base, 2nd base, etc." Sure, you've grown and you can bring much more to the table and get new results this time, but would it really be more satisfying to jump over parts because you've already done them once?

b) I do agree with the sentiment actually even though I don't think this is the solution. The feeling is that that you have grown as a player, and the early game of WoW... for hours upon hours, doesn't even give you the opportunity to be the player you now are. You can level more efficiently, but you could be doing so much more with all your skill and knowledge. It feels like you have to wait to get to the actual game. I'm curious about a New Game+ design philosophy for alts, rather than catch-up mechanics. Catch-up mechanics only help to circumvent the issue. (The reason for them is more than that but that's another topic.)

The question could be, "how can we let the player re-experience the game on a new character, while also allowing them to express themselves more as the advanced player they are (and reward them for it)?" Because the irony is, making your character strong with BoA items actually makes the game even more trivial than it already is to an experienced player. Some games do the opposite and offer you a hard mode for replayability. I don't think that is particularly fun or interesting or in the spirit of an MMO-progression system. I'm not sure what it would look like but how about something where you do get to stomp your way up to max level, not by being automatically stronger, but by giving you the tools to put your max-level playstyle to use? What if on your max level character you could obtain "challenges" for your alts? Imagine an item that creates a portal that spawns mobs very quickly, along with a large haste+mana regen buff for you to give you a challenging, fast paced encounter that would be too much for a noob, but gives you a huge amount of exp and a blue gear reward? Just an idea, but you see what I mean about giving you more gameplay as an experienced player rather than less?

[Darkeon]

Most should be BoE. Once equipped, locked on said character.

[ZazuuPriest]

Everything should be unbound completely ala Diablo. There is no reason for the binding of gear

[schwarzkopf]

If everything is shared between alts, there is no longer any point in alts. Just add class change to the store and we are done.

The reason alts aren't mains is because of the things they don't have - if they had everything the mains had - then they wouldn't be alts.

[CalamityHeart]

This sounds like that ARPG design trope where you have a box of stuff that's sharable between all the characters of an account and can hold onto stuff that's not necessarily useful to you, on the off chance that it's useful to a different character.

While I suppose I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to that sort of idea, being able to send whatever you want to whatever character you want with few/no restrictions, something about it doesn't really sit well with me. As it stands, I can already send a decent amount of aid to budding alts via the BoA things I do have available. And being able to do that to a certain extent, as in, somewhere more or less on the brink of true endgame progression without going too far over that line in the sand, is perfectly fine. But at the point where you can simply mail a top-tier Mythic piece of gear to a freshly-dinged alt who's not even LFR-queueable yet? That feels like a bit much.

I suppose one could say that they've earned that Mythic gear piece and could do whatever they wanted with it, and were WoW an ARPG with a key focus on high-difficulty single-player, group-optional/unnecessary endgame content and encounters, I would agree. But it's not. And you didn't earn that Mythic gear piece. Your group did. And that in mind, there's just something chafing about the idea of that gear piece going into someone's garbage bin (read: alt), when it could've instead gone to someone in the group who could get more immediate value out of it. The idea that no one in the group can actually use it, and it just goes to someone's alt, isn't really much better. Sure, it's a baby step past watching that piece get disenchanted or vendored, but I just don't really consider that all that huge and revolutionary leap in game quality. It's taking something away from the concept of progression, I feel like, and I don't think that chipping at that block is worth the boost in 'alt-friendliness' that making everything BoA would provide, personally.

[WowIsDead64]

This was a successful venture in a few other MMOs, and I feel like it could make a small QoL upgrade in WoW. Not everything you loot is usable by an alt; however, there are the occasional items that could be useful to hand off to alts, encouraging extended game play on those characters. How many times have new crafting mats continued to drop on your main that your alt still needs to farm? Or currency.

Wouldn't it be nice to make all currency account wide so all characters can add to and take from the same currency pool? What if you need Badges from Timewalking for an alt? Or maybe you want to let your main use every Darkmoon Faire ticket you have spread over a dozen characters? There is no harm in changing specific items from Soulbound to Bind on Account. You would actually log into that alt more often and not spend so much time staring at items that would have worked better on your Paladin or Hunter that just serve no purpose for a mage.

You have already taken the time to earn it. You should benefit from its existence. It's not like you will raid gear an alt in a day simply by switching to BoA since your loot table is already set to your current Class/Spec. There isn't a single downfall to this, and if nothing else, would keep people subbed longer to play alts since they could now use things which have been BoP since Wrath, and crafted items which are BoP could now be sold to the public, or even to alts. Worst case scenario, make it all BoA on that specific server. My Proudmoore characters could use anything from another Proudmoore character, but maybe my Medivh characters can only tap other Medivh characters. Maybe instead of BoA it becomes BtS (Binds to Server).

Of course it's a pipedream, but what are your thoughts?

It's common problem. Making rewards account-wide would require making time-gated CDs account-wide and it would reduce amount of content available. Alts are still intended to be "Doing the same from scratch" thing for players, for whom playing on one character isn't enough. This is controversial. From one POV it's right game design. From another POV alts aren't used for getting extra content only. In many cases they're used to increase diversity of game. And long-term grinds not being account-wide kill such diversity, because player just can't switch to another character due to it being incomplete, while it's impossible to catch up within reasonable time frame. Yeah, catching-up - was Blizzards' way of dealing with this problem in the past. Way too long grinds (like Anima grind for example) no longer work this way. This makes game alt-unfriendly.

[Venziir]

Honestly this ties in with the silent "What are our accounts' characters to eachother?" question that most refuse to entertain.

Are they secret buddies? Alter egos? Then this makes sense.
Are they nothing to eachother? Then current account-wide stuff doesn't make either.
So it's something between those extremes, my personal headcanon is that they are sort of like goof pen pals or something of the like; they can never share adventures and are each very different, but politics cannot intrude upon their friendship, and they happily share what they don't need between one another.

I like this though, it's kinda cute.

[Lochton]

No thanks.

That said, I would welcome them making transmog unlock universal (You find a piece, it is unlocked, no matter armor type of weapon).

[shise]

I for one would prefer for my time to be respected. If I obtain priest loot on one character I would like to be to actually use it and not have to grind for it twice.

But that goes against the principle of playing yor characters... You are meant to develop them by playing them. Otherwise class commitment is gone and then what´s the point of having different classes in the game in the first place? It is meant to be an MMORPG.

If you are playing class A, you are commiting to it, and you should not expect to be able to gear up your class alts B and C. Then you should play those instead or play them later too.

FF14 has jobs with a character being able to be all. I understand the practicality of this, but I find it to be a failure at the same time. I much more enjoy not being able to have it all on, but appreciate what little or much I manage to get on them, raher than passively know that I will get it all, anyways and without much extra effort. This makes it all lose value and interest and leads to quick burn out.

[czarek]

For transmogs YES not in the end game content.

[Stricks]

I for one would prefer for my time to be respected. If I obtain priest loot on one character I would like to be to actually use it and not have to grind for it twice.

Your time was respected when they decided it would be easy to gear your main character. This "grind" you are referring to for gear is literally the game if you're raiding.

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Why is this a bad thing? Levelling stopped being a fun gameplay loop in of itself over a decade ago. It's only speedbump you have to slog through until you reach level cap, where the fun game that people actually want to play begins.

That may be true for you, it is not for a lot of people. I love leveling a fresh character. Stop speaking in absolutes based on your own experiences and likes.

[Tentim]

It makes sense to do... that said wowscommunity weirdly treats wow as something serious rather then a game and it would upset people if better players then them out geared them instantly on alts.

I'm not sure why it does but it would.

[Myradin]

While I understand some convenience is nice, I dont understand the desire to have all alts instantly match the main for effectiveness without having to actually play them. Isn't the point of an alt to have more to do? If you dont have time or dont want to play on alts, don't make alts.

Why would people player 10 alts of the same class?

If all gear was BOA, why wouldn't you? You could raid for your main's gear 10 times per lockout.

[Segus1992]

Why would people player 10 alts of the same class?

Because this stupid suggestion makes that optimal, obviously?

[tomten]

there are literaly hundrets of small little QoL changes they could make that would be a small or even a large benefit,but...wow still doesnt have actual player housing,they dont even care about a major feature that would be extremly popular like transmog if not more

They tried and it failed spectacularly, its called garrison, you can go visit your house now, anytime you want.
The rest of us? We don't want housing.

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But that goes against the principle of playing yor characters... You are meant to develop them by playing them. Otherwise class commitment is gone and then what´s the point of having different classes in the game in the first place? It is meant to be an MMORPG.

If you are playing class A, you are commiting to it, and you should not expect to be able to gear up your class alts B and C. Then you should play those instead or play them later too.

FF14 has jobs with a character being able to be all. I understand the practicality of this, but I find it to be a failure at the same time. I much more enjoy not being able to have it all on, but appreciate what little or much I manage to get on them, raher than passively know that I will get it all, anyways and without much extra effort. This makes it all lose value and interest and leads to quick burn out.

You've got it all wrong, completely. The point of having different classes is to enjoy the game, remember? Its still a game that you're meant to enjoy, shocking, i know but thats still the main thing about wow or any other game.

This "committing" only exists in your own head, because thats how you feel like playing. Easy solution? Don't send gear to your alts and instead "develop" them any way you like WITHOUT telling the rest of us how to play or enjoy the game? That would be great, wouldn't it?

You deeming it a failure doesn't mean its a failure, again, most of us, play games to enjoy them, not have them as a 2nd job.
What burns you out? Is having to farm that gear, currency, rep, "whatever" to be able to play your alt... Thats the burn out... Not enjoying a dungeon or raid on that alt.

Again, you can play wow for whatever reason you want but remember, its A GAME NOT A FREAKING JOB... Let me play the game as I want and stop saying absolute things from your narrow, small, ignorant perspective.