I agree with whats said here, SL has the potential of being really alt-friendly, but a bunch of unnecessary design currently makes SL heavily alt unfriendly.
I noticed this already when playing with 4 character, its incredibly time consuming.
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I have 4 level 60s all at around 190-210 ilevel because of how alt friendly this expansion is compared to BFA.
The only un alt friendly thing is unlocking Torghast layers… it fuels my hatred for Torghast even more.
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Torghast
The Maw
The intro
Gearing (PvP gear does not count)
Anima
WQs
All of these have issues, sure theres the Renown catch up but when you look at everything, it becomes more clear.
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It’s one of the most alt friendly expansions - working on my 4th toon.
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All alts should be parked at lower brackets in protest, and those brackets used to farm at level, or pvp? An idea. 
Would make a statement if people only had 1 60, and the rest 50.
100% agree that Shadowlands is not alt-friendly.
I have 4 60s. I no longer play 3 of them. I’m leveling a 5th and play my main. And yet you have to at least have 4 60s, once for each covenant, if you want the full story. This game is a time-gated time-sink gated on currency grind on top of a pyramid scheme of other currency grinds.
… I actually play classic more than retail now because of it.
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Is it really though?
WQs were made longer and have multiple steps, some of them taking a really long time
The intro which for whatever reason still doesnt have a skip
Gearing is a nightmare unless you PvP
You gotta unlock every single layer with every new character, which is heavily time consuming
The Maw in general, with Ve’nari reps and the overall unfriendliness of the place and lack of mount.
And if you do want the mount you gotta do a REALLY LONG slog in Twisting Corridors
Soul Ash being time gated.
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You might want to read the article (or skip to the end for the conclusion). In my experience you’re not going to enjoy having 4 60s.
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I can’t stay interested in it enough to keep one character going through Torghast much less another.
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A wise orc once said
and it’s still holding true today.
Until we can agree on 'What is “alt-friendly” ’ we will never be able to determine if an expansion is alt-friendly.
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It depends on how you want to go about this. If you want your alt to be main number 2, 3, or 4 then you are correct. It isn’t as alt friendly in that regard. However if you intend to actually treat your alt like an alt, then it is very friendly. I have 3 alts right now at 60 and they range from 158 to 171 ilvl. I’m just doing the callings, the WQs and weeklies for anime as I slowly catch up the campaign. I upgrade the set and run some heroics to fill in slots and they are perfectly viable in open world content, and soon LFR.
I think the article makes a few good points about what make the current expansion less approachable (see how I didn’t use alt-friendly) for alts. I also might have skipped ahead at the conclusion because I knew there would be a bullet list of all the things
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Working as intended.
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Great article. Thanks for posting it!
Nice to see someone commenting on this that does more than just dungeon/raid. Some of the comments on this forum from those types about this are just like they are playing a different game.
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I really enjoyed the article, especially having just gone through most of these issues on my alt Ret Pally. Right now my biggest issue is trying to obtain certain gear such as a tank weapon and conduits - I must have gotten crazy lucky on my Warlock main, because I can’t get anything even remotely useful to drop in dungeons. Currently on nine straight bosses over the last three dungeons with no drops at all, which is a new personal record.
Here is exactly my problem with the entire argument. All the time people say things like the above, indicating “alts” should be weak and useless characters destined to limp through world quests and nothing further. IMO, that is NOT an alt, it’s NOT a functional character and thus it’s a waste of time.
So to define “alt-friendly” you need to also define “alt”. If you just mean a character which sits at max level doing nothing interesting and just looking pretty, then LITERALLY ALL EXPANSIONS HAVE BEEN ALT-FRIENDLY.
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How about you not cherry pick my statement? I never said it was weak or useless, I even said “it depends on how you want to go with this.” I even stated if you wanted to treat an alt, which is by definition a “secondary” not “primary” like it is a main, then it is indeed alt unfriendly.
However, if one would like to treat an alt like a secondary character and not sink that level of investment, I gave my example of how things work for me. You can even do the level of content I’m doing and gear them all to do said content, which is what I’m working to do. I don’t do mythic plus, I don’t do any raids outside LFR anymore and it is indeed a manageable goal.
Next time look before you leap.
Seriously this is my only issue. Please just make the floors account wide Blizzard the climbing absolutely sucks.
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An alt in SL to me, has the covenant campaign completed, covenant gear maxed at 197 and all other pieces at least at heroic ilvl 171.