From what I understand it was extremely uncommon back in Vanilla to have more than one max-level character, what with how long it took both to level and to get things done in max-level dungeons and raids.
This is another area in which Classic is very different - while you still get people who just don't like levelling much or simply prefer concentrating all their efforts into a single character to make that one the best it can be, I think it's far more common for players to have more than one character at the level cap after one and a half years of Classic than it ever was back in the day.
While I've been playing since launch as well and have been levelling characters at what I feel is a decent clip for a casual player, the fact that I started on Horde side and then switched to Alliance on a different server has made me feel somewhat behind compared to my guildies. I have to admit I'm rather in awe of the alt stables that some of them have.
Especially when it comes to professions, having multiple max-level characters is a significant boon in Classic, as characters will need the services of most professions at some point, and many professions rely on materials provided by other professions, so having all of that unified under your own roof so to speak allows for an impressive degree of independence. There are limitations of course: For example an enchanter can only enchant their own gear and that of other players; there is no way to transfer an enchant to an alt character. On the whole though, there are a lot of synergies.
This really hit me when I got into raiding properly and started to require a steady supply of certain consumables, mostly potions and crafted arrows. For the arrows, you need a close-to-max-level engineer with a rare-ish schematic or you'll have to buy them on the auction house every time. Fortunately the hunter class leader's rogue alt is an engineer and he offered me early on that I could just mail him the materials and he'd craft the ammo for me for free.
Potions and elixirs make for an even bigger expense and highlighted my dependencies even more as it seemed like absolutely everyone had at least a herbalism alt. Grousing about the prices of potions on the auction house would pretty much inevitably get me the reply that I should just gather my own herbs and send them to a friendly alchemist - as if everyone automatically has that option!
My mage who is a tailor and enchanter isn't too far behind at level 44, and while enchanting is a major pain to level she hasn't been doing too badly on that front either. I like the idea of being able to craft my own bags come TBC, and if I want to create my own enchanting materials she'll need to be levelled up too. In Classic you can disenchant gear of any level with an enchanting skill of 1, but in TBC they introduced skill requirements for disenchanting different levels of gear as well, so once again, that's going to come in handy.
I guess if you really dislike professions all of this could be seen as a lot of annoying busywork, but I really like the way this slow and steady investment of time and money really pays off after a while. There are still reasons to go to other players for certain rare or specialist recipes, but being able to cover a lot of ground via DIY is nonetheless extremely valuable.
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I understand exactly where you're coming from. Because my herbalist is AZ, a Rogue, I'm not "optimized" when it comes to farming lashers. On the flip side, she also doesn't have a few critical potion recipes, such as Greater Arcane Elixir, so that means Card is highly dependent upon Az being able to funnel just enough herbs to a friend's alt just to get those made prior to raids. And the cost of picking up the recipe on the AH is something around 1000 gold, which is far out of my gold range.
ReplyDeleteOr that Card is an Enchanter, and yet she can't enchant raid or L60 enchants because she hasn't been able to afford an Arcanite Rod (or the components to then take to a blacksmith) so that she can turn into the Runed Arcanite Rod going forward. I think this is the first week in quite a while that she has enough extra gold that it's becoming feasible, and even then a lot of the enchants that she herself would use she simply doesn't have.
And I watch some people powerleveling alts like they're nothing....
Hi Shintar;
ReplyDeleteBeen enjoying your blog (and Redbeard’s as well) for about a year now, thank you very much for the thoughtful reads over these months.
I’m a huge altoholic, to the point of maxing out my entire account across 5-6 servers, BC was when I launched across multiple servers. During Vanilla, I was a little late to the game, starting about 6 months after launch. My first week I’d already created multiple classes, knowing that I’d want to be playing everything I could. I originally started on text-based MUDs, and had many, many levelled characters there.
What started out as a desire to explore the flavors of different classes quickly showed the benefits of having all the bases covered in professions. Gear for my alts was the first benefit, then when I started raiding it was an incredible bonanza not to have to spend that oh-so-precious gold. I remember quite well the difficulty in earning gold until much higher levels, and even then it wasn’t a quick task like today’s retail.
When BC dropped, I had just finished levelling my first toon to 60, a rogue. I stayed away from BC for a month or so, until I had a few more toons to 60, ready to head them into Outlands. I remember very well how awesome it felt to start gathering new materials for all the new recipes and patterns in BC, knowing full well that I’d be making suits of fel plate armor, knothide leather gear and netherweave cloth gear for the following alts. A huge boon, especially in that it was spaced very nicely in terms of levels, like 60-61-63 etc. Perfect for levelling a stable of alts.
Really looking forward to that same experience in Classic BC, but I’m way behind right now on levelling my Classic Alts. Time to come away from Retail and back to Classic. The alt-train keeps on a chuggin.
Bill
Thanks for your comment, Bill, and for providing the point of view of someone who was a huge altoholic even back in the day. You're kind of supporting my point by admitting that even your alts weren't max level back then! :D
DeleteAbsolutely in agreement, during Vanilla I was working from home at a job that took me about 3 hours to do, and able to spend an incredible amount of time on gaming. So, even with upwards of 30+ hours a week spent on WoW, I couldn't level them fast enough.
DeleteBC changed that, hugely, that was when I not only maxed out to 70 all my toons on one server, but was able to branch into another server, fill that to max, and so on. Vanilla just took so long, that and the fact that I didn't know 10% of what I knew during BC. Thottbot, Allakhazam were a shadow of their BC incarnations during Vanilla.
Bill