OK, this isn’t a rant or asking to change things or whatever, more of an observation.
Have you noticed how WoW turned from “single character” to an endless alt army “meta”?
Back in vanilla maintaining more than 1-2 serious characters was an adventure. Nothing really was “alt friendly”.
The pressure on altoholics was alleviated every expac a little bit but not much - rerolling was always a PITA and basically progress on one character wouldn’t help the alts.
That was even noticeable in crafting - most crafts were always BoP so you couldnt craft much gear for your alts. You couldn’t even enchant your alts gear before vellum etc etc.
Only in MoP they introduced account wide rep bonuses and slowly Account Wide stuff started. Still, skips were rarely introduced until later.
Certain “Power” grinds also made you specifically attached not only to one character but sometimes even a single spec (remember Legion??)
Now we were in SL, later in DF - some of most alt friendly expacs - a lot of transferrable currencies, account wide stuff etc. etc. But that’s not “only that” - over time the process of levelling was super streamlined, hastened, eased, dumbed down so pretty much anyone can get as many characters on max level as they wish. Even if they don’t have time - they can just boost either via Blizzard service or Custom LFM “gold boosts in Azure Span”
If you’re still with me - you might be asking “What’s my point? Why do I point out the obvious”?
Well, here is the catch - WoW, by its design, unintended or intended - promotes the “alt army” approach.
Basically if you have 1 character you are cooked.
It’s infinitely easier to play and focus your “main” if you have many alts. It’s easier to achieve goals, complete achievements and collect items if you have many, many alts. The more the better. It scales in a way that having a character cap on max level is “the most efficient way” to achieve your goals, whatever they are.
The goal was most likely to let people switch characters freely but the unintended consequence is that the more characters you have, the easier your game becomes.
But, Vulgoku, what the hay, gimmie examples, you talk garbage!
Just a few random examples
- if you raid on ONE character in a given season - you will never collect mogs for all armor types in a raid. You will even have a low chance to collect your own class. Now imagine you have lock, mage and priest - you raid with them all - you have many more occassions to complete mog sets. For class or armor type, whatever the season meta is. Just because you raided on more characters. There is no catchup for 1-2 character player. They are cooked.
- If you have only 1-2 characters, then completing certain achievements might be way harder, especially if they involve “lockouts”. My favorite example will be collecting Minis in Mechagon. If you try to do it on one character - good luck getting King Mechagon - with 1 box per week with 0,7% drop chance. What people do, according to wowhead is making alt army and mass opening boxes every week. And it’s only logical. Trying to do it on 1 char would be insane. I myself parked some of my unplayed alts in Mechagon just to open 1 box a week.
- Same goes for any pet/mount drops. Whether it’s a weekly lockout or daily lockout - if you want to achieve your goal faster and it’s “something important” to you - you obviously have to run / kill the thing on multiple characters. The best examples were seasonal events pre Midsummer nerf/buff - having character cap was what hardcore collectors did to get the pet/toy/mount. Luckily the change now kinda stopped the madness. But it’s not only that and you know it.
- We have a situation where having MULTIPLE WOW ACCOUNTS ON YOUIR BATTLE NET might be the “best thing to do” in order to be top in this game. Be it transferring gold/items between server AHs or just idk, farming old raids with your second account on /follow? Well, let’s not forget how multiboxers farm(ed) materials, making millions until Blizzard stopped it (a little).
- Professions - do you know that having 1 char with, say, JC or BS, is not enough to be “Good” at professions? See start of expacs since DF onward. You have to get knowledge points and invest in trees. But you have limited number of points and you need, say, gems as well as rings and necklaces… What do you do? You have 3-4 JCs who spend initial points in different trees - having this way everything covered you can dominate the market easier. And now with addition of “Concentration”, or mettle before - the more prof alts you have the better for you. All “wow economy guides” tell you to set up army of prof CD alts like “alchemy/tailoring” alt being most popular. Draw the conclusions yourself.
- Meta rerolling. Imagine you maintain several chars but play 1 mostly at a time. But this main of yours, thanks to Blizzard’s meddling, suddenly is bad. But now you have some alts to choose from, you can easily gear your alt and get back in the meta.
A funny example - I have a friend who, every season, starts with several chars of the same class - and sees which of them gets “best gear” at start - then he mains that one. So instead of letting RNG get him in trouble, he simply just play several times to see where he gets lucky. I wouldn’t suggest this approach but it’s not dumb - if you have enough time, this might actually be the efficient way. - season 4 “bullions” - remember people crying they can’t get enough bullions for mogs and the mount but they also need gear on their “only character”? Well, see, if you have alts, and you maintain them to the level of LFR, you can collect “jokingly infinite” number of bullions and buy every single mog on the vendor that you care about. People with 1 or very few alts were basically in trouble here.
- access to professions. Like - 1 char can have 2 main profs. So you don’t have access to anything else. Now with all prof stuff being Work-Order-able, having several alts with “all the profs” might not only save you time but is just convenient and get you gold. Someone with 1-2 chars can run into some issues.
This was just several examples where “alt army” makes your game better easier.
I don’t know if it’s the right approach. OTOH it rewards dedication to maintaining characters but also it can be abused by boost/no gear if it comes to camping/farming… Many people don’t want, don’t care about alts and they disadvantage themselves.
Now we’re gonna have a warband. IDK how all of that is gonna work as I didn’t dabble in meta but I sense problems… Will account wide rep be infinitely spammable by repeating conent on alts? Or will there be some limits and deductions so people don’t abuse it?
What about rare lockouts? or currency farming? With transferrable currencies you might be able to funnel stuff to one char. etc etc
I’m not sure I like the meta where having 50 active chars is the best way to play. I liked it more when it was harder to actually have alts. Things got so streamlined, convenient and pro-player that it got a little stupid.
and Deja, spare me your talk that I don’t have to do this - I know. I don’t have to. Nobody has to. But the fact it’s actually a thing is the problem. The game evolved into promoting this kind of “meta”. A bunch of players abuse it without hesitation…
