This expansion started brightly, encouraging alt play by reducing the time it took to get to max level, improving the path to max level. I had high hopes.
Then the systems came into play:
Weekly Soul Ash grind in Torghast (a little monotonous but it was new and led to an exciting legendary). However, the amount of Soul Ash required to build a legendary was ridiculous and it time gated some classes ability by an extreme amount. Multiply that by each alt. There either needed to only be one legend available to each class, or much easier to acquire Soul Ash. It was also extremely punishing if you missed a week for vacation or so on and could not actually catch back up til much later in the expansion…
Renown. I actually thought renown was well done, it was enjoyable content to go through the story and be rewarded for it. But again, it would need to be repeated for each alt. It was still fine when it only went to 40 and was relatively fresh and new.
AND that was it for 9.0. It wasn’t too bad. Some gripes, but overall I enjoyed leveling my alts. But then 9.1 hit. And I will call 9.1 possibly the worst patch in regards to systems and alts/casuals since I can remember.
Soul Cinders added to create an additional barrier to acquiring legendaries. Doubling down on the worst part about 9.0.
Renown extended to 80, which was fine the first time through, but horrendous each time you had to accomplish it on an alt.
Stygian Embers… I truly hate this system. It is by far the worst system I’ve ever seen put in place in this game. All of the above systems have at least some sort of catch up mechanism, and while those catchups may still be lacking and annoying cause they require you to repeat monotonous old content over and over again, they are at least there. Stygian Embers has no catchup mechanism, requiring alts to never be able to achieve optimization without multiple weeks of farming the same raid over and over again, per character! I could go on and on about Stygian Embers, but lets just say it has removed much of my enthusiasm for playing any new characters in the game. I will be happy to see this go in 9.2.
Blizzard, if you want to make an alt/casual friendly game:
Make all reputations account bound
Make story completion account wide / skippable after the first play through
Never allow more than one system to affect player power in an expansion and make whatever is required to feed that system casual friendly in regards to catchup mechanics
We the players really enjoy playing this game for the fun parts of the game. We are willing to farm content (rep) or resources (materials) when those things don’t become the majority of the content we have to do to progress our characters.
I understand you want player retention, but we will play the game because what we are playing is actually enjoyable: M+, Raid, PvP, Collecting Cosmetics. Putting in systems and barriers to repeatedly delay us from enjoying that content has ruined WoW and needs to stop immediately.
It is a very alt friendly expansion. Sorry your “alt” isn’t supposed to be “main #2”. Maybe if you aren’t trying to make your alts like mains you would see this. You want a bunch of mains then put in the work. Otherwise, it is an extremely alt friendly expansion.
Gotta love these people today who just want everything handed to them. “Wahhhh. I want my alt to have everything unlocked like my main, geared out like my main, all rep exalted like my main and I don’t want to have to put in the work to do it.”
clearly, blizzards idea of alt play was just to timegate progression so you could get your main done, and then do it all over again on all your alts in the same week.
To be honest I never even really saw a statement from blizzard saying this was supposed too be super alt friendly. Only time I have heard that was from people in the community.
This expansion has been awful for alts, one of the worst ever. Getting to 60 and buying 200 gear off the AH, 200 conduits, 40 renown takes only a couple of days. Then you’re hit with an avalanche of grindy garbage that you’ll have to do for months if you want to heroic raid or pvp on your alt. Then you have to be that guy, begging your guild every day to carry you through M+ for gear.
I can’t believe they said Shadowlands would be alt-friendly with a straight face. This is the least alt-friendly expansion in all of modern WoW. I don’t even think Legion was worse, and Legion was terrible for alts.
Everybody has their own definitions of stuff. Having to do keys/arena/raids for gear, I think, is obviously fine, it’s just nice to be able to skip some of the other stuff, like torghast, conduits, memories, etc. Most of the changes they’ve made have been good.
I’ll play through anything once, but having to do something like Codex on an alt just results in me not playing the alt as much as I would’ve if I had a skip/catchup. Just as an example.
Wow, do you think there might be a connection? Come on, think about it, put the pieces together, you can do it!
No?
Okay, let me spell it out.
Every time Blizzard removes play time from the base game, they add it to the end game. And because they are not constrained by tradition to create fresh, flowing adventure questlines, they instead create all these repetitive farms, which are easier and cheaper for them.
And what do you want them to replace that play time with?
And don’t say play alts because not everyone plays alts and you have left very little for alts to do outside of M+ dungeons and raids.
These sort of ill-considered requests is how the game ended up in this mess.
There fixed it fer ya (bolded) because this is 'merica and we don’t hold with no royals!
Keep asking for everything, and saying blizzard doesn’t listen…
So, basically you want to level a main, and have it grandfather everything needed for main 2, and so on.
That essentially creates a cloning system… for example, let’s say orc mm hunter becomes the next FotM… and you don’t have one. Tomorrow, after a brief time spent in the editor, chosing hair color, you think up a name… BOoM, instant main 2.
And you can do it 34 more times, cover all the class specs…
36 mains, for the work of one. I mean, why should you have to level it, gear it, any of that notfun stuff… you have the right to jump straight in.
Back to reality… I ain’t enjoying level #7, #8, and #9 alts either… but if I want them, the method is clear.
Dude at least there are alt catch-ups if you have a main. Imagine being a brand new player coming into this xpac, the grind is so overwhelming and absurd.
Actually, I don’t have to imagine jack…
I came into game early BC… no catch-up anything… not even a 4 slot bag. I had to play through vanilla, to get to burning crusade.
AND then I had to wait 15 years, to get what a newb gets now.
Torghast: sorry, you do not need a 262 legendary for an alt; it’s not a second main, and if it is, the 20 points of stam won’t break you. You can repeatedly do the lowest level of torghast for ash for a 235. Your main can send ash too.
Renown: …you can buy 40 renown instantly. After that, every calling will reward renown until 78. Torghast drops renown, regular, heroic, mythic and mythic + also drops renown. LFR drops renown. World bosses drop renown. What’s the big deal? The main ISSUE here is just the last two renown needing the anima quest and Korthia quest done
(big whoop).
Embers: …seriously? Gotta say, I haven’t actually seen this complain on here yet lol. I suppose as someone with no shards of dom at all, it’s a non-issue for even my main, let alone my alts.
Conduits are by far the most annoying thing for alts, and even that’s been somewhat eliminated with that new consumable, at least you have the base conduit and then you gasp play the game to get the higher ones.
I do think that ALL of this, should have been there from the beginning though.
A second main, which is what it sounds like you want, warrants the same amount of effort as a main, and with that comes the headache because keeping two mains up to date is hard.
I haven’t had any problems leveling and gearing alts, and I don’t really get to play much with COVID running rampant (healthcare provider). My main sits around 240 iLvl, and his tank brothers all sit around 230+. The only one below 230 is my DK I just brought back 2 weeks ago and he is 60 and is around 215…. after about 3 or 4 days play. This is by far one of the best expansions for alts and I have been around since beta. I even have a hunter and Warlock I don’t really play and they are around 210. All 4 tanks I run have their legendaries with 3 of 4 having the 262 version. This is not that hard, folks. The only hard part about it is that crappy (big boy and girl words aren’t allowed) shard system for the raid armour and that is being phased out…