Alts in WoW

Community General Discussion
1

First week of shadowlands has passed and another week with more activities are unfold for us to explore and do but in the last couple of hours ive been thinking about a question: Why do people play alts?
i came to this question while i was looking at my screen with 11 50 lvl characters and 1 60 lvl. I mean people do the main questline and the gear grind/WQ grind etc etc on their main, so whats the point in doing it on an alt?

I know what youre gonna answer me, youre probably thinking “to do professions burh” or “to play another class bruh”, i get that but… whats the point of having a main then? doing same content that takes hours with another character that you have to press different buttons and it makes different sparkly stuff. Idk if im looking at alts in the wrong way but it seems that classes in wow are all the same but can only be different if youre playing tank, healer or dps.

Im currently in the dilemma of wanting to play Enh shaman, mage, hunter, warrior, dk and every. single. class. I just find all of them enjoyable and just see myself wanting to play them but nonetheless the crippling reality is that leveling 11 other classes just because you want to play them is not possible (unless you have no commitments in real life).

Im honestly just trying find a good excuse/reason/motivation to level character without feeling bad about it.
Id also like to know people’s mindset about how they approach alts not just in Shadowlands, but in general.

Sorry for the long post and hope i can read enlightening answers.

4 Likes
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I make alts for the professions, don’t care for any campaigns or whatnot on them unless ot’s to advance their crafting/gathering.

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Back in WOTLK I had alts so that if someone dropped out of the raid group I could sub in. I also had some alts purely so that I could level up with a friend and they wouldn’t be playing alone.

In SL I’ll only be running maybe 3 characters… My main paladin tank, I want to experience the Ardenweald campaign so I’ll level my druid (I can tank/heal/DPS) then too, and I also want to play Horde. I’ve always wanted to play Horde since I started playing in vanilla, the only reason I didn’t is because irl friends were already on alliance. So now’s my time!

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I play alts cause my goal for the expansion is all classes and races on both factions max lvl and all professions max lvl (And that for each old content too). I started with this after my summerbreak, while recovering from a depression/burn out. I dont bother to grind for endgame anymore but play wow to relax besides hard work in my job and all the troubles covid and its travelrestrictions (wich makes it hard to be with my bf) gives me.

1 Like
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I just play alts to collect the various transmogs for classes I enjoy playing like druid/warlock/mage but my main will be for progression first and foremost.

The idea of an alt is to play them when your not in the mood to play your main OR you’ve hit the weekly/daily cap and dont want to run content you dont need just for something to do.

As you’ve said were a week in so stressing about playing multiple alts is just silly because as the expansion moves on there will be alt catch ups and you will have more downtime on your main as you essentially just raid log and do dailies/weeklies until they reset.

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the end game is to collect mounts/titles/transmogs in that order
with more alts you can obtain more endgame

3 Likes
7

That’s the thing: I was done with that on day two on my main. I do the odd WQ that rewards me with a conduit I want, and if my daily Calling asks me to, and then I’m done. I ran an M0 world tour, there are only two pieces of gear I have that could use an upgrade, but since I already did all M0s in gear that’s 20 ilevels below what I have now, there’s no rush. I leveled my professions on my main, capped soul ash, and so on.

So I leveled another toon, my secondary main, a tank - my main’s a healer, and I wanted a different class to tank with. The DH is soul ash capped, did 3 mythics last week, has professions maxed, and I only do WQs if they reward a conduit.

So I leveled another toon, my gatherer. That one is not soul ash capped, because for gathering, I don’t need a legendary. I will eventually get him one, but there’s no rush. I grabbed all the flight paths, unlocked the Maw, and in general made the char ready for farming mines and herbs.

So I started leveling another toon, my priest, because I love Mechagnomes and eventually want one at max level. She’s almost 52, will hit 60 this week, and I’ll deck her out in heroic dungeon gear, cap her soul ash, and move on to the next alt.

I’m not really interested in the side quests and whatnot at this point, WQs give me little rewards (no, I don’t really need the rep either, not at this time anyway), so since I restrict myself to activities I deem mandatory, there’s a whole lot of time for me to play other characters for various purposes.

I plan to have two mains: this druid, and a vengeance DH. I will try to keep them at similar power levels, cap soul ash every week, run my mythics and soon m+ runs, cap renown as well, and so on.

I will have a horde of alts too, for farming, for crafting, for fun. On those, I will care little about power and progress. They will maybe do a bit of Torghast here and there, but if I don’t cap soul ash, I won’t worry, they aren’t doing any content that needs a legendary. They will maybe run a heroic or two, and a weekly m+ later, but if they don’t, I still won’t worry, because they’re alts, and their purpose isn’t to push.

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Because if i have to play boomkin or feral as dps im gonna get depressed

& some do it because they wanna play a role their class can’t ( Rogue mains who can’t play tank or healer, ect )

Thats not alts, those are slaves

9

Well… you do you? Why would you have to feel bad about playing alts? You’re paying for your own subscription therefore you decide what you want to do with your playtime. It really is that simple.

As for why I, myself, play alts. Simple. My fav dps spec doesn’t have a healing spec and I also enjoy healing. So I do both. Later down the line I play my others alts because I like those characters and sometimes you just want to mix things up. I don’t necessarily do the same content on them all.

Doesn’t have to be this huge reason behind everything, especially not in WoW. Could just be as simple as “Because I want to.”

10

I prefer the word ‘Minions’.

2 Likes
11

Fair enough!

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Why play only 1/12 of the game you pay monthly for?

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I like variety

The idea of only playing one class just seems really boring. In a game full of grind, it helps to press some different abilities yknow?

1 Like
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a main is just the char you are logged on with, and proffs and different classes is a very valid reason, why on Earth would i feed the AH thieves and their ridiculous prices? why play any game through again, any movie, any lp, i don’t understand…what’s not to get?
what i never liked is how they lock professions behind rep now which certainly, i agree, can cripple your will…

15

Yeah, this is a dick move.

16

Weeelll you need at least 3 alts to see all the story etc with the campaign.

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With the countless of forms of RNG now tied to power, the best way to play this game is to have your server full of alts of the same class, max every week on every alt, and main the one who has the best RNG.
This one’s 176 but if I wasn’t this lazy I could’ve had a 183 mage by doing exactly the same things I did on this one. Maybe get some useful conduits too.

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My approach is that I reduce the amount of activities that I want to do on alts. Shadowlands is great for this. On my main, I complete the Maw and Covenant dailies every day, but on my alts, I just do weekly quests. Their progress will be slower, but they’re not gimped. It’s not like Legion or BfA where you had to farm AP, Essences or Corruption on alts as well.

1 Like
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The less I play my lvl 60 “main” char, the more I am motivated to play my alts for fun. Because I can keep my denial alive as to what awaits me at the end-game.

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Because I don’t like sitting afk doing nothing after I finish my daily stuff.
Because I want to experience the covenant storylines.
Because playing different characters and classes if fun for me.
Because I enjoy leveling more than endgame.
Because I need one class for each armor type to get transmogs.
Because I finished AC: Valhalla and can’t decide between getting Immortals Fenyx Rising, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin or Granblue Fantasy Versus.
Because I have nothing better to do on most days.

However I don’t always do the same grinds on my alts or I only do it one alt at a time even tho I might have multiple at max level. Usually my time ingame is spent on my main, then the alt I enjoy the most or feel like playing at any given day / week.

I also have this weird “project flashback” character that I farm old raids on with very specific rules; I can only move to next raid after I have the full set and specific weapon & shield. So I started from Molten Core, got the set and and the vanilla BiS shield and weapon, have to wear those as transmogs until I get the full set, weapon & shield from BWL and then mog the BWL set until I get the AQ ones and so on. I’m enjoying this immensely and have been equally excited for getting new SL content for main each reset and having BWL lockout reset for alt :smiley: