With alts such a massive part of WoW. I kind of curious what type of damage this has done to the game. Professions have a harder time then they would making money because what point is there in buying something from a profession at a marked up price when you can just become that profession yourself.
For grouping content it reduces the number of people you need for raids and groups. Instead of having a roster of unique players you have your core group with multiple alts to bring if they need a different role or class.
I’m not saying Alts should be removed or anything, just bored really and pondering how much damage it has done to the game and what the game would be like without so many alts. Maybe professions would matter, and more people would have a chance at being part of the core group.
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Alts are fine. People wanting to skip to where their mains are in a week on their alts are less fine.
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I like MMOs where gear is account bound instead of character bound so I can hand me down stuff I don’t use anymore to my alts.
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no way…alts are good.
the reason being is that they make you overall better at the game.
it’s like playing a fighting game…if you only play one character you only one understand one facet of the game.
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Don’t really like that statement much lol. I think that would kill the economy so hard.
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Alts being immediately more powerful as mains is bad I think.
But mains not being able to play all their specs relatively equally without arbitrary restrictions is absolutely terrible.
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It also eliminates like 3/4 of the reason to play more than one character if you just funnel old gear to it from the main.
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Bring the account, not the toon.
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When Blizzard does it right, alting permits you to play one character effectively on 10 hours a week, while allowing the no lifers to spend 40 hours a week playing alts. That means Blizzard doesn’t have to force us to grind for 40 hours a week just to keep up one characer (hint, hint, Blizzard). That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
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I honestly thought about making that thread instead of this one. The entire alts as mains discussion. Because I tend to agree that thats a bit damaging as well. It really makes it so they have to balance the entire game around that which just feels gross to people that don’t want a bunch of “Mains”
Other MMOs encourage alts even more than WoW. ESO lets you send gear that drops for your main to your alts and SWTOR heavily encourages alts with the reward system for finishing each class story.
I wouldnt have played WoW all this time if PvPing on alts wasnt viable like it was until BFA. I cant imagine playing one class and being satisfied.
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That is because the game has been balanced around Alts being a thing. If they wasn’t balanced around alts. Content could be made with more single character content in mind.
Blizz encourages alts through bad class design and abrupt class changes. Suddenly your level 120 is no longer fun to play because they arbitrarily decided you didn’t need a certain skill.
You go to level an alt, but you see the Azerite power grind before you. Oh no.
Unless you’re a level 120 with a bunch of friends who can just on a whim carry you through Mythic 10’s and gear you out in a day it’s pretty damn not fun to make alts so I don’t see how it’s encouraged.
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That would force people to play hybrids so they get 3 or 4 character roles for the price of 1.
Gearing a warrior tank, a priest healer, and a rogue DPS shouldn’t take much more time than gearing a paladin for tank, heals, and DPS.
I don’t consider gear to be an arbitrary restriction. When i say arbitrary restriction, I mean things like the conduit stuff
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i wish all specs were viable and balanced for content more or less in a way…
i don’t want to feel forced to play specs or classes that i don’t like because they aren’t optimal.
for example, i wish frost mage, feral druid, and marksman hunter were more viable this expansion in terms of mythic+ dps.
i don’t want to be forced too much to play given specs or classes because they are the meta, if that makes sense.
however i still definitely want to alts to be a thing because i like to play lots of different clases. i just don’t want to be forced or shoehorned into playing a certain way
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The problem is Blizzard has done two expansions in a row with an infinite grind for your main - the correct way to play is to funnel all your effort into one character for several months. Then, once you’ve progressed, you want to start playing your alts that lagged behind.
Shadowlands will have a weekly cap on renown and a weekly cap on legendary marts so ideally you can maintain multiple characters at the same time. This should eliminate the need for massive catch-up gimmicks.
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I agree, nothing I hate more then being forced into a meta.
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One thing they could do is go a FF route and allow you to change classes, effectively completing everything on a single toon even though you’d still have to level each class separately.
I think it depends. As far as this current expansion, the fact that it takes two months to be competitive is kind of silly. You have to invest just as much time as you did on your main sans a few “catch ups” which really aren’t.
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