Alts and How to Manage Them

Recently I talked about Gear Rating Sites; how they can help you establish and meet goals in your WoW career. Today I saw this post on Banana Shoulders that has led me to revisit this topic. A few other things have happened to lead me to consider this topic in greater detail as well, for starters I’ve recently consolidated my characters. With RAF and mulit-boxing I’ve amassed a fairly large stable of alts, I have recently however decided to curtail my boxing habits. Boxing has been good to me, but it just doesn’t make sense to me to do it anymore. I won’t deny I enjoy it. In essence, I’m more interested in tanking for my guild than five-boxing heroics ad nauseum.

Throw in the much anticipated faction transfer service and I’m finally able to play my old level 60 main, Xombi. This warlock has been languishing on the Malorne server, virtually unplayed since the release of Burning Crusade. Levelling him up now and replacing all that vanilla tier gear and other beautiful purple goodness won’t be so painful since I haven’t touched him in a couple of years.

This brings us to something very pertinent to the discussion of goals and managing them: I now have 10 characters (one of each class) on my main server. All are level 60 and above, in varying levels of gear. Now what?

Alt-Itis:
It happens, and it can be either a very good thing or a very bad thing. Most of the time when people think of alts, they automatically go to the negative aspect: “Soandso doesn’t raid with us this week, he wants to play his Huntard lulz“. Obviously, this is a very real possibility. But it’s a little short-sighted to think of it only in this way. Take for example my own situation, I’m the main tank. When we raid it’s my job to take the boss and have my way with him, while making sure he doesn’t have his way with me (or the raid for that matter). This is fine, this is what I signed up for. However, there is a point where you’re not getting loot anymore. There’s nothing left in the zone, and you’re doing a stressful job to help guild mates get gear.I’ve seen a lot of dedicated tanks burn themselves out and quit WoW altogether because of this very issue.

There’s a lot of ways to deal with it, one is alts. Play a healer for a while (trust me no one is going to ask you to come tank Nexus if you’re playing a Priest). Of course, you’ll still get asked to go to those same instances… but you’ll be doing something different and possibly getting some loot that this character needs, you’ll get to experience the feeling of progress, achievement. Of doing something that is immediately important to you. It is in this way that an alt can be a god send to the burnt out tank, and really to the raiders who depend on you. Remember raiders, it’s in your logical self-interest to let your tank play his alt once in a while.

Time Management and the Alt
There’s a few things yet for me to accomplish on Khaas before I can honestly say I’m “done” with Northrend. There’s the obvious: kick Arthas in the balls and lay claim to Frostmourne er, I mean Shadowmourne. And the not quite as obvious, I want to clear all of the old content that still exists on Khaas. That is, clear out the old dungeons and raids. Especially before Cataclysm makes some unplayable in their current state. Similarly, I have some achievements I’d like to get out of the way: Glory of the Hero, The Exalted, etc. I’d also like some specific mounts: Ashes of Al’ar, Netherdrake(s), Anzu, Great Brewfest Kodo, etc. Some of these goals overlap and so working on one brings me a step closer to another, for instance getting the Netherdrakes requires Exalted reputation with the Netherwing which is another reputation closer to the 40 needed for “The Exalted” title. Obviously, I want to get as many titles as possible too. I’ve only had the one Champion of the Frozen Wastes for far too long. And it’s long past the point of being “cool and unique”.

Also, it’s important to note that some of this is simply possible only during certain times of the year, as with the Brewfest mounts. That being said a certain prioritization needs to be taken into account when figuring out your goals. Prioritizing goals, and managing the time spent toward reaching those goals is even more important when dealing with multiple characters. In the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, “The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do.” For instance, you can spend a couple of months working on quests for the Loremaster achievement/title on one character, but you can’t do it on 10. Realistic goals are just as important as having goals in the first place.

Sorting out the Short-Term from the Long-Term
The easiest way to understand this is by looking at the achievement Glory of the Hero, in itself the achievement and it’s mount respectively are a perfect example of a long-term goal. It is impossible to complete this achievement in one sitting, because of some of the limiting factors imposed by Blizzard. It is however theoretically possible to complete most of it in one shot; it’s just not likely.

This achievement is made of a series of short-term goals, if we examine the requirements we can break it down into it’s parts.

Utgarde Keep: On the Rocks
The Nexus: Split Personality, Intense Cold, Chaos Theory
Azjol-Nerub: Watch Him Die, Hadronox Denied, Gotta Go!
Ahn’kahet: The Party’s Over, Volazj’s Quick Demise, Respect Your Elders, Volunteer Work
Drak’Tharon: Consumption Junction, Better off Dred, Oh Novos!
Violet Hold: Defenseless, Lockdown!, Dehydration, A Void Dance
Gundrak: What the Eck?, Share the Love, Less-Rabi, Snakes, Why’d it Have to be Snakes?
Halls of Stone: Good Grief, Brann Spankin’ New, Abuse the Ooze
Halls of Lightning: Timely Death, Lightning Struck, Shatter Resistant
The Culling of Stratholme: The Culling of Time, Zombiefest!
Utgarde Pinnacle: The Incredible Hulk, Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi, MY Girl Loves to Skadi all the Time, King’s Bane
The Oculus: Experienced Drake Rider, Make it Count, Ruby Void, Emerald Void, Amber Void

Again, it’s possible to do almost all of these in one sitting, but not likely. There’s just too much here. You would need to be a very experienced player with a group of people dedicated to the cause. My advice would be to pick one of the instances and work on it until all of the achievements are done in that instance. One good way to do this, is watch for the Daily Heroic and Daily Dungeon, you can usually find people who are anxious to do those instances and get a couple of achievements knocked out. Pugs might not be the best for some of these (Less Rabi for example) but they’re still doable. And it’s a lot easier to convince guildies to go along when they can get a couple of extra Triumph badges out of the deal as well.

In the case of alts, this mindset is similarly applicable. I have 10 character slots filled, so naturally I want to make all 10 Revered with the Oracles to maximize my chances of getting the Green Proto Drake and the various pets. All 10 of my characters are at different levels of gear and experience though. So, in the case of my warlock and hunter for example, I need to level them up before I can even work on these quests. My Shaman and Priest however are 80 with some epics. So they’re perfect for working on this rep grind. My DK and Warrior already have Revered and are getting eggs every 7 days. So, say in a weeks time I’ll have two more eggs per week. Then I can work on the quest line with my Druid and Mage. Then my Paladin, level up my rogue a bit and do the quests with him. Then Hunter and Lock. This also will help my gold doing these dailies, and give me a little something constructive to do with my time. In the end, what matters is that you take a deep breath an really critically examine your options and figure out a logical progression from one step to the other. It’s not as easy as saying, I want Netherdrakes on all 10 of my guys. Sometimes you have to compromise, and accept the fact you can’t get it all at once. But with enough time and planning you can eventually meet all of your goals.

That’s about it for me right now, check back later in the week when I’ll be talking more about alts and tradeskills.

One last note before I go: My guild, Face on Fire has a new home page check it out.