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Monday, December 3, 2012

What's wrong with just wanting to raid?

"Regarding the alt unfriendliness of MoP. You created a huge requirement sink and refuse to address the elephant in the room"
"If an alt gets every accomplishment your main has then you have few reasons to play that alt. There has to be a better design."
"I disagree Greg. I play dif chars because I want to play a dif class, not to get some achieves. Make them all .net bound."
"But what are you going to do on that character if it has everything the main does. Just raid?"


I wonder what is wrong with just raiding. 

If I had it my way I would raid a whole lot more than I do now. I happen to find it the most fun and challenging aspect of the game. Granted, I wouldn't have time to raid every day, and most of the days I do log on to do one or the other in the game, but if I could choose I would love to have an insta raid ready for me the moment I log on and feel like playing for a few hours. (not an LFR, I love raiding, but LFR is not raiding for me).

I prefer to think of my alts as holding wintersleep
Also, I wonder what else they want to see as final goal in the game. Dailies? Dailies to me have always been a means to an end. And some people may enjoy them. Some people may even enjoy them so much that they  don't feel a need to do anything else after the dailies, but to me that has never been a goal on its own.

PVP? Sure, pvp is an end goal in the game. But then the argument that is being made here, completely invalid as well. "But what are you going to do on that character if it has everything the main does?" More PVP?

Do they really believe that people have alts to do the achievements again? I would bet that this is about the smallest part of the wow population you can imagine that actually does this. People have alts to have a change of scenery, to learn from a different perspective in the game, to experience a different playstyle. Some may have a specific alt jus tot PVP since they don't enjoy their main in PVP. Others may just really like questing. One of the main reasons is probably professions. But least likely it seems to me that people have alts to do the same dailies and achievements all over again.

Achievements on many alts is not a goal, and while I believe that the road to the end goal in the game has to be interesting, sometimes challenging, and always rewarding, I do not believe that it would hurt gameplay one bit if alts would have more things account wide.

Also, I think the forum poster here expressed himself badly. Alt unfriendliness in MoP is something that seems to be experienced by a lot of people. Myself included. I used to love playing alts, experiencing different classes, and different viewpoints. I had 7 characters at 85 and I with that I was definitely not special.

But now...now I have 1 character at 90. Exactly 1. My hunter is halfway through 89, so closing in on 90, but that took me remarkably longer than it has ever taken me before in previous expansions.

Why then are alts so unattractive at the moment?

I play on average about 18 to 20 hours per week. And I think this is quite a lot already. This includes 8 to 9 hours of raiding, and 2,5 hours of achievement/challenge runs on my Sunday evening. But what do I do in the rest of the time then? I still have about 7 hours of not raiding or achievements...well, I prepare as much as I can for raid.

And when I say as much as I can, I mean as much as I can without burning out on the game entirely. You see I don't like doing dailies. But to get my lesser charms I have to do them. So last weekend I spent about 3 hours just on doing dailies and getting my lesser charms so that Tuesday I can get my elder charms.

Other than this I want to not be broken on my characters. I hate standing at the AH and not be able to get my gear enchanted or gemmed. I have guildies and raid members who help with this of course, but sometimes I'm simply impatient and I just want that enchant/gem now. So I spend time on working the glyph and darkmoon card market. This takes about 20 minutes per day and keeps my wallet nicely filled enough to do what I want to do without going bankrupt.

Then of course I have some things in the game that I would like to do, which makes up for the last 3 hours of playtime. I go looking for pets, or transmog gear, or I do my farm, etc.

So reason number 1 why alts don't get pulled out of the stables? Time. They have created so many time sinks that are semi-required for the main that I just don't have a lot of time left to play an alt.

Next to this I still needed a lot of items on my main. Items that seem to all be soulbound, bind on pickup. So reason number 2, I cannot get what I need on my main by playing an alt. And I'm not talking about BoP gear, I am talking about spirits of harmony for example. Which I need to get my lotuses for flasks. I am talking about reputation, which I need for gear. Valor points and justice points, which I need to upgrade my gear.

Reason number 3, is that those reputation grinds are each looking like mount everest to me (and to a lot of others if I follow the forums a little). I haven't even been able to finish the rep grinds on my main. And time that I spent on my alts is taking away time from my main, who I feel already doesn't do everything I could do to be in the best shape possible for raid. I regularly don't do LFR. Last week I did only terrace. I don't max out my valor points every week. I haven't grinded all the reps to get the gear. Etc.

Every time I feel like playing an alt, I am thinking, "But I should really be doing this or that on my main" followed immediately after by, "But I really don't feel like that, blergh" and then quite often ends with "Hey Thror, feel like watching a film?"

Simply because it is all too much. What needs to be done is so huge still, that I cannot oversee what all needs to be done, which leads me to just not doing anything.

Lastly, reason number 4, As if it wasn't enough the first time I need to do all of it again on my alt. Once I finally have stuff on my main, I have to do the same grind (less heavy due to new rep tokens) again on my alts. To get to the better profession recipes I have to grind several alts to revered with shadopan for example. Tailoring and enchanting being two examples.

It feels like a task on my main, but it discourages me completely on an alt. So my hunter is hanging around at 89 and a half, because levelling her to 90 means that I have to start the rep grind.

Somehow I think Blizzard has shot themselves in the foot a little with this, and I think I'll leave my hunter where she is and level the warlock to 89 and a half next. At least at that level there's no pressure of rep grinds if I don't reach level 90.

But hey, this is just my take on this. Opinions may vary.

3 comments:

  1. I totally agree. In every other expansion, I had to toons at max level, one of each class. And the reason was a change of pace in raiding, and professions. I made a staff with inscription for my main. As soon as I replaced it, I had the choice to get rid of it through a quest and get 10 scrolls of wisdom back, or give it to an alt (was account bound).
    That last thing in the world I would want to do is spend all the TIME leveling an alt, just to spend all the TIME dailying an alt, and so while I haven't got rid of the staff yet, I think I will eventually, because alts aren't worth the time anymore.
    Heck, I have a hard time valor capping just on my main due to lack of time in game, why would I want to try to make time for an alt too?

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  2. I agree with you entirely, especially when you say the people levelling alts to redo achievements are probably a tiny sliver of the player population. Teeny tiny sliver.

    Shouldn't Blizzard know this already? They made so many achievements cross-account, and battle pets too, surely because they recognised it's the player they want to retain, not the character, and the player will play longer if they can get a fresh view of the game with the minimum fuss.

    Besides, if rep was account-wide and all, and Blizzard kept up the content patches, we could go through some of those dailies on the bloody alt. That would be a good way to make dailies more bearable: make it a-okay to do them on whichever character you prefer, and have the different classes add flavour to the samey grind.

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  3. I bet Blizzard does know about it. But sometimes, despite what they hear from the community, they hold on to things.

    Sometimes for the best, sometimes...not so much.

    I do think that this issue is not something that can be ignored. Eventually Blizzard will have to do something about it, and I bet they also know this, and are talking about it already in their offices :)

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