Why do people have multiple “alts”, sometimes several of the same class?

[Arwuld-moon-guard]

I have 4 hunters, 3 DKs, 4 monks, 3 druids… Hmmm…

[Airune-proudmoore]

I enjoy leveling. I enjoy playing different styles - often when I have multiple of the same class, they’re different specs - I might have a beast mastery hunter character and a marksman one, an arcane mage and a frost mage, etc.

I don’t do high level content at the moment, I haven’t set foot in Dragonflight content at all. I do what I feel like is fun - which is questing, collecting transmogs/mounts/pets/recipes, and making weird challenges for myself (like doing loremaster on each armor type so I actually get all the questing transmog options).

[Majesticar-moon-guard]

Gosh, I could do the Belf starter + Ghostlands in my sleep. A classic area with danger that didn’t hold your hand.

[Nalin-nesingwary (Nalin)]

More characters to hunt mounts with.

[Tovi-moon-guard (Tovi)]

[Ogdenir-alleria (Ogdenir)]

Ran out of stable slots. This was before the upgrade.

[Edgyjojomeme-nathrezim]

Leveling alt is free, race change cost money

[Tiranica-bloodsail-buccaneers]

I don’t do end game content so gearing characters is 100% irrelevant.

[Keymah-moon-guard]

@Smightme-malfurion

put to better use gearing out the toons

i don’t know, why are people obsessed with the gear carousel?

[Drachkin-thrall]

I’m honestly considering making an alt army of envokers.

Primarily because I’m enjoying the class so much - I want something else to do when I have a full valuy already filled

[Faustius-emerald-dream]

i have multiple of the same class for transmog reasons, i like to transmog my bear as a tauren but i like my balance to be a night elf

but in more practical terms:
specs have different stat requirements/focuses so some play them like different classes

especially when it comes to the vault, sometimes youll get a BIS item for your alt spec, but youll get a piece thats BIS for your main spec too - to mitigate that some people will just have 2 of the same class so the risk of that will be slightly blunted (if rng wills it)

this is just mine and a friend of mine’s philosophy.

[Typhön-tichondrius]

@Smightme-malfurion

An alt is something you actually play semi regularly, yet some people just level a toon to max, never play it, and call it an “alt”. What’s the point of having 50 max lvl toons, across servers, if you only avidly play maybe 2 of them? Wouldn’t that time lvling 40 toons been put to better use gearing out the toons you actually play?

Rng is a plague. A lot of these alts help to combat loot rewards because of the rng. Tl/dr the alts provide more dice to roll.

Also many players create multiple of the same class back in shadowlands when they punished players with the covenant system by not letting them freely swap for different types of content. So they created various characters of the same class for each respective covenant.

[Eternosus-galakrond (Eternosus)]

Alts are a bit like bigger battle pets. Gotta catch 'em all.

[Gaffgarion-garrosh]

Well, I got multiple alts for multiple different reasons. Such as I got 2 main for Alliance, and 2 main for Horde. Some max level characters for transmog runs, some level 10 Twinks for fast Chromie Time dungeon runs, and that is just some of the reasons for some of the alts I have.

Edit: To be more specific…

Alliance Main(s): 2 (1 DPS, 1 Tank)

Horde Main(s): 2 (1 DPS, 1 Tank)

Alliance: 13
5 max level
6 “60”
1 “35”
1 “10”

Horde: 6
2 max level
1 “45”
1 “35”
1"30"
1 “10”

This does not include the graveyard that many old characters ended up in for one reason or another.

[Thundraxx-stormrage]

Different races, I have multiple warriors/paladins/rogues all across my account. some horde some alliance. sometimes we choose alts that we are familiar with to farm.

[Demography-tichondrius]

@Majesticar-moon-guard

Gosh, I could do the Belf starter + Ghostlands in my sleep.

I can probably do the same for Elwynn Forest and Westfall.

[Terranox-stonemaul (Terranox)]

Helps with mog farming and stuff like mount farming and collecting season tier/lfr mogs, and a whole bunch of stuff like limited weekly catalyst charges.

Also you like a class alot and love many races, you don’t mind having 2 or more of that class honestly.

[Orctang-area-52 (Orctang)]

@Smightme-malfurion

An alt is something you actually play semi regularly, yet some people just level a toon to max, never play it, and call it an “alt”. What’s the point of having 50 max lvl toons, across servers, if you only avidly play maybe 2 of them?

I guess you don’t farm things.

[Aspect-baelgun]

There’s also a restriction of 1 dracthyr per server on an account, so there may be some more alt accounts just from that.

Some people like to min max (or just theme everything) including racials. They may have different race/spec combos for the same class.

There are also self-imposed play style choices like, “This account is entirely solo content” or “I only play this account with my friend(s)”.

Also all of the above replies. I get it if it’s not for you, but to answer the question there are just a lot of different reasons which will make more sense to some than others

[Anhanrundek-altar-of-storms]

@Smightme-malfurion

if you only avidly play maybe 2 of them?

Thats your first erroneous assumption.
Eventually I jump back to pretty much all of them.
Each alt has its on individual mogs and work done on it.

Most of my alts are locked into old content. Maybe a dozen are in current total and only 8 are max level currently