Alt-itis?!?Follow

Please forgive if this has been asked before, but I'm just wondering...

In your opinion, how many is too many alts? As the expansion is about to release I have all ten slots (6 of them 85, 1 70+, 1 40+). What do you suppose is a reasonable number of alts to manage and actually focus on?

I will admit playing has fallen off and will continue to as school begins for the last time, but I'm starting to think that 6 might be a little too many (even if I focus just on 85s).

So I ask for your input and appreciate any advice you offer.

Very true, and I am well aware that answers are not a one size fits all. I'm just trying to get a sense of where folks are.

I would love to get more into raids and such but present (guild/realm/etc) really don't lend themselves to that.

I have most (LW and BS are the exceptions) maxed.

So really, it is more for sanity's sake. I feel like I abandon toons when I don't play them for a month, but that's the way it works sometimes.

So, yeah.. just looking to start a talk amongst the folks who frequent the boards and see where they are at.

Vanilla, TBC & most of WotLK I only had one max level toon. Cataclysm I had a 85 paladin, & then a priest, resto sham & a hunter at 85. With a Warlock & a DK at 70+. Boredom is a bad thing in an MMO .

I had a fairly bad experience with a guy I raided with back in TBC, in the guild we downed T5 in and got our Hyjal/BT attunes before they got removed. He had full char slots with max level toons and didn't know how to play any of them properly. He thought it gave him some knowledge of other classes and and the authority to talk. Also my brother was fairly bad for getting alt-itis and having a number of mediocre toons & then wanting to get in at a higher level of raiding and then performing poorly and wanting to raid with another toon. When if he stuck to one toon and put the time to gear it and learn its rotation he would probably have melted face.

Maz, that is freaking hilarious.

IMO unless you have/devote huge amounts of time to the game, if you are at least semi-serious about progress, you can only have one, perhaps two "real" toons. I'm talking about normal, progression, raids, not 12 months after the release of the last raid and at the end of an expansion. Perhaps LFR, even with its many, ok just one - people, shortcomings could make room for a further toon,

This is coming from my own experience and I'm sure more hardcore players will disagree, but on a five-day a week raiding schedule you're already putting at least 18 hours a week into the raid. Add your HC runs, LFR and of course the dailies and you are looking at about 35 or so hours at least (more at the beginning of an expansion). Every week. Now I imagine you won't be doing dailies on your alts (I mostly do, just fewer of them, on my "active" alts) and with the VP and JP changes to alts coming up in MoP you could shorten that to 25 hours a week per extra alt at level cap with all relevant professions maxxed (to me, cooking and fishing are relevant on your main as you need them to contribute/deliver fishing feasts). From there, it's up to the player, I guess.

Of course, top guilds will mostly skip HCs I suspect as they will be getting epic gear way faster and thus have no need to blast into HC territory, though they will still want to experience/see the instances and with the introduction of Challenge modes they might even be doing said HCs more come MoP.

Me? I had 8 80s at the end of Wotlk, but only raided on three, and only really raided on one. I've mostly skipped Cata and now I'm simply leveling said alts to 85, and two more toons I've rolled, at a leisurely pace. Come MoP I'll focus on my main and take it from there I guess.

Edited, Aug 27th 2012 10:18am by LGarth

50 slots full.
10 85's on my main Ally server.
1 85 Horde on another.
Most of the other 39 are somewhere between 10 & 70.

I really enjoyed exploring all the various classes and most specs within those all the way through to endgame; 9 of those 11 are 372+ and have done LFRs, though I've only done my real raiding on my Shammy for Cata. It was nice, but ultimately kind of pointless (even within the parameters of this being WoW) and quite expensive gold-wise. A lot of gems/enchants were purchased for toons who ultimately really had no need for them other than to just see how I could do.

I'm really considering with MoP trimming that all down and just focusing on maybe a couple toons if I can. Just not sure which ones til I see how all the changes play out.

Someone let me know when this argument breaks into uncomfortable, sloppy makeouts.

On the main topic, I've always a main and a primary alt. In Vanilla and TBC, my main was Poldaran(the mage) and the primary alt was Alexandrine(twink 10-19 flag carrier turned 20-29 godly healadin turned emergency backup healer when people didn't show up to raids). It WotLK, it was Poldaran(still a mage) and Azmaria(DK who I sometimes tanked raids and often tanked instances with). During both of those, there were periods of time where I was raiding 7 nights a week while working a 40 hour a week job and still playing an additional 4 hours a day. If you're having trouble adding that up, you're probably factoring in too much time for sleep. In Cata, I haven't really raided, but Poldaran and Azmaria have kept their roles, though I added in leveling up a warrior(Eadric) to play with some friends. Through all of it, I've kept 3-4 alts I play relatively often.

In my opinion, the only time you truly have too many alts is when your characters aren't pulling their own weight in group activities(especially guild raids and regular group PvP) because you aren't spending enough time to keep them in good shape.

I don't raid any more Mazra XD, I used to raid but these days I'm struggling to find a way to raid one day a week and still push some content. When I did raid, yeah, I raided 5 days a week. We were nowhere close to world-class material, but we did put a lot of hours and it was a blast.

The idea, just to recap, is to IMO decide what it is you want to do with your toons and make a weekly-hour estimate. I personally have always treated alts as alts, no need for achievements, mounts or vanity pets, just to push into moderately current content (not HC modes, yes to normal raids) and experience the game from another perspective, mostly away from the bosses groin where tanks (my main) spend most of their time.

So it's just a matter of simple math. I imagine with "serious" alts you'll do (Raids + Dailies + Challenge modes) x No of toons in hours (admittedly with a bit of factoring)

Peronally, in MoP I want to do 5 hours of dailies/ challenge modes/ LFR / HCs + 4 hours of raiding a week once I hit 90, but I think I'll find it hard to actually be able to get this done and eventually I'll either up my playtime to 12 hours (two raiding days a week), just on my main, or quit again.

He already did state his goals. The part "focus on" is the one that varies from player to player I guess.

You've only got yourself to blame for that. Bars have been open for hours. And I'm sure you have a fridge for a reason.

We almost never joke.

I saw in another post that you've been away from the game for a bit, so I don't know how much you've been following news and all that. But as of today with patch 5.0.4 they finally gave us an extra character slot, so now you can have 11 per server.

50 characters total per account, still. You can have (in MoP) up to 11 per realm.
.... Or do we get 11 now, after the patch? Didn't think to check.