Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Multiple Alts Shouldn't Exist to Serve Your Main Character

Watcher said that line in the Q & A over the weekend, that "multiple alts shouldn't exist to serve your main character."  It is a line that resonated with me.  It was one of those lines that I felt meant so much more within the context of how it was used.

The first thing that came to mind was that we will see a great deal of profession changes, once again, come the next expansion.  My prediction, and you can quote me on this, is that next expansion your character can learn all professions.  We will no longer be limited to only two.

Being this would have a huge impact on the market as a whole because fewer people will need to seek out others to make things for them they will also go back to the proper leveling of professions.  No more of this "craft at skill level 1" that we have in warlords.  Sure it is nice that you can make everything at level one but if they are going to do something like this the very least they need to do is make you actually level said professions instead of making it that everyone can make everything at level one.

Perhaps giving us all professions would be too much.  But mark my words there will be changes and I could see us getting at least 3, or maybe 2 plus a gathering, or maybe all people will know all gathering professions by default and we get to pick two crafting professions.  Something will happen because it seems to be the idea that alts should not exist to serve your main.

So why did I immediately drift to professions when I heard that line?  Because I remember when I created my first alt.  I created it for the purpose of making gear.  It was a rogue leather worker so I could make gear for my hunter.  I believe that if you looked into it the first alt most people made ended up being one that had some profession that helped their main.

All my original alts were made with the purpose of supporting my main.  As a hunter that kind of meant I needed every single profession to support me.  I needed alchemy to make myself flasks and potions, I need a leather worker to make myself gear, I needed an enchanter to make myself enchants, I needed a jewel crafter to make myself gems, I needed a blacksmith to make myself belt buckles, I needed an engineer to make myself scopes and arrows, I needed a tailor to make myself bags and I needed a scribe to make myself glyphs.  So needless to say when I started to get into the game a little more my alt army got pretty large pretty fast.  Not because I wanted to play other classes but because I needed every single one of those things for my main.

As the years went on I started to play those classes of course and my druid became my main tank and my priest became my main healer.  Over the years other tanks or healers became my go to guys for those roles, but the bottom line was my main was still my main.  I tanked and healed to fill in the gaps so to speak.  To gather materials, to help others with them so they could in turn help me.

But the bottom line is that my alts were created to be professions mules for me.  Nothing more originally.  And if they are going to ever try to make a concentrated effort to remove the need for alts to serve your main character, as that quote implies, than my hunter needs to be all those professions.

This is why I read between the lines with that quote and feel that in the future it is quite possible we will have all professions on any one character.  Perhaps professions will just be account wide, like pets and mounts and such are right now.  Seems like that would be the best way to do it.

The only other thing it could mean is that all classes will be able to fill all roles.  So I won't need my priest to heal for me if I wanted to heal and I won't need my druid to tank for me if I wanted to tank.  But as I do not see them giving my hunter a healing spec and a tanking spec any time soon the only thing it can mean is all professions will be capable of being done by one character come next expansion.

The question is, would this be good for the game?  And a secondary question would be, would you still play as many alts as you do if you did not need their professions?

Because it all seems like blizzard is trying to push us away from playing alts.  Not exactly sure why they would want to do that, but it sure seems like that is their intention.

57 comments:

  1. My first fully leveled alt, was because the raid group I was in at the time kept having to cancel raid due to lack of healers, so I leveled a resto druid and got her geared for real quick. However, my second, third, and probably fourth (it gets hard to remember) were all for professions.

    However, I don't think I had quite the same mind set as you described. I've never been short on gold because, well, hunter who kills and loots every mob in a 40 yard diameter, wherever I go. And every server I've been on has always had a decent enough economy that I've never struggled to find a chant/gem that I needed.

    But, at some point, I just made the choice in my head that I wanted to be the type of person who was providing more than taking. The guild I was in at the time was really struggling, lots of very selfish players, and I couldn't think of any way to convince people to be less selfish, so I just decided that I was going to be able to provide anything that anyone in the guild needed, free of charge. I'd like to think it helped with the overall attitude of the guild, though, it did eventually dissolve, and I of course moved on.

    Since WoD, I haven't leveled any of my profession focused alts. Huh, you know I hadn't really thought about that till just now, I've only leveled my hunters (2 ally and 2 horde).

    Anyhow, since I don't enjoy the garrison/missions mini-game, I haven't really geared any but my main hunters, either. If I don't need them to support my main, I can't imagine leveling too many alts in the future.

    I don't know if it's good or not, though. One thing that seems to be on blizzards mind (really for the last 4 or 5 years) is that wow players are getting old. I might be the exact age that they're talking about, as I was in college when WoW came out. At some point my priorities have shifted, so maybe I would have stopped dedicating so many alts to the game even had WoD not changed the needs for professions.

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    1. As I think about that more, though. I don't necessarily spend less time playing the game (even if I perhaps pull less all-nighters). I just have different priorities when I'm playing. To me, alts feel too grindy, which is odd because I certainly still enjoy spending hours and hours pouring through combat logs. :-P

      I wonder fairly often if WoW is a lost cause at this point. Gaming has changed so much, their audience has changed so much. perhaps there's not much point in trying to keep WoW going. Not that I want it to end or anything, just have no idea how they can ever make it as good as the glory days of wow.

      The older I get, the more I just want what I want, and am less willing to be told what I should want. Assuming others feel the same way, but in ways that are specific to themselves, there may be no hope in appealing to all of us.

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    2. I never had a problem with gold either but the best way to make gold is to not need to spend it. Not to mention I am one of those people that like to do everything so I had to have every profession. I like being self sufficient.

      I also ended up using my many alts the same way you did. To provide a service for everyone in the guild should they need. I gemmed and enchanted more people than I could ever count. I've made enough belt buckles to reach from new york to california. You know the routine. It is nice being able to help and me helping somehow opened up others to become the same way and that is really good for a guild in my opinion.

      You are not the only one getting older. My priorities in game have changed a lot as well. I was already well out of school when I started and my home life has not changed, still in a relationship, still same job and same hours, still same friends, etc. So nothing has changed for me in life and yet I too have changed in what I want from the game. Just human nature, can't always chalk it up to change in life because mine did not change yet I did as well.

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  2. Changes to professions won't affect my altaholism at all. It's true that I have a complete spread of all the professions across my One-of-Each-Class set of primary characters, but that's as much or more because I wanted to experiment with all of the professions for their own sake as because I wanted to be self-sufficient in gearing my main, Kamalia. Each alt has the professions that I think will serve her, individually, the best.

    I have a lot of alts because I wanted to experience the playstyle of each class. I have duplicates of almost every class because I wanted to experience the playstyle of the different specs within the classes without having to always be completely changing my spec. Thus, I have a primary Shaman who is Restoration & Elemental and a secondary Shaman who is Enhancement. I have a primary Hunter who is Beast Mastery & Survival and a secondary Hunter who is Marksmanship. I have a primary Druid who is Balance & Restoration and a secondary Druid who is Feral & Guardian. And so forth.

    D'you suppose they'll give us Triple Spec, too?

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    1. Grumpy, I need to report Kamalia.

      She stole my comment. The phrasings are slightly different, but I can tell. This is almost exactly how I am.

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    2. Kamalia is practicing mind reading and from your response they seem to be getting very good at it. ;)

      Even if mine were created for professions I became the same way. Just wanted to experience the play style of all of them and try to get better at them. As a raid leader I think knowing all the classes is somewhat important anyway, but I like doing it.

      I think they should just allow us to switch specs like we do talents. If they do add something I would not mind dual class. So I could be a hunter priest or something of that sort. Could be interesting.

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  3. I've said here before that I only play my alts to further my main. Indeed, I will not take an action on an alt that doesn't get my main something. Any avenue of using an alt to benefit a main that is removed by Blizzard will by definition reduce the amount of my play on that alt. Remove those avenues entirely and I will never log those characters again.

    To put it in its most base form: My alts are slaves to my main and he likes them in chains. :-/

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    1. It is my belief that you are the exact person this comment was intended for. People who use their alts for the sole purpose to further their main and only that reason. They want to try and remove the need for that.

      I wonder what ideas they have in mind to do that and what changes, when they make them, will hurt the people that like playing alts because they enjoy it.

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  4. I read the comment in a completely different way.

    http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/12630-live-qa-with-ion-watcher-hazzikostas-warlordsqa/

    They mainly talked about trying to make the benefits of alts scale at a rate that was reasonable (like they did prior to the garrison). Having multiple alts that serves your main is not really an issue, if you have to go out and farm the matts, level a character and the professions. That’s the big difference between the proposed harbor and the Garrison table , you need to farm Oil which is a needed resource that does not automatically spawn at the garrison.

    Warcraft continues to promote alts with, easily managed heirloom gear, level boosts, and account wide mounts.

    The biggest issue Draenor has is that they failed to scale content with alts. Profession changes that encourage getting as many cool downs as possible, because of all crafting mats being BOP and locked to a daily cooldown/workorder. The garrison missions are similar, players can chase the same daily rewards again and again and again across multiple toons, that breaks the game.

    But Watcher had to stop short of calling out WoD on its failures, they know its garrisons not alts that are the issue here, so I think he dodged the question. Just look at the follower up Lore asked him, I think the questions were scripted intentionally for flow (expecting the false assumption that Watcher would actually answer the question asked of him).

    “What have you learned about what didn't work with Garrisons and why no one leaves it?” Was the immediate follow up….

    I would not expect to see any drastic changes to professions or alts in the next expansion, but I would expect drastic changes with player housing, which is the real issue with altoholics.

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    1. But they destroyed alts this expansion with the removal of valor gear. I always used valor gear as a means to keep alts someone geared up so they could step right into normal (now heroic) if I wanted to do a run with them. This, to me, was the death of alts when they removed valor and now with that comment I put the two together to read as they do not want us having alts.

      Garrisons were an issue from the get go. We all talked about it on beta for a very long time. We told blizzard it was a bad idea, we told blizzard no one would ever leave. If only for once they listened to reason they would have not run into this problem they made for themselves. I love garrisons, do not get me wrong, but I hate what they did to the game.

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    2. I haven't found found content I need to gear an alt for. They can just sit in the garrison, none of the support actions involve outside content. Follower missions are the main source of gear (one piece every two weeks same as valor-timeline).

      Had I needed to do anything, on them to get what I needed to help my main I would have tried to get them geared. As of now what they are wearing is a side effect of running LFR for Legendary quest regents

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    3. I like to raid on all my characters, but I do not like to raid on my alts every week to gear them up so they can raid. So that is the content to which I am referring. Without valor I can not gear adequately to just step into nromal (now heroic) like I always had.

      A change like that is huge. Extremely huge. A lot of people talked about quitting over flying but if I were to have quit it would be over the absence of valor. If I can not gear my alts in a meaningful way up to a decent level to step right into the raiding I normally do to start with then I do not play play. If I am not playing them I am not getting as much from the game as I feel I should. This is why valor gear matter so much to me personally.

      And you can not compare 1 piece of randomly generated crap gear every two week with valor gear, sorry. Does not work. Valor gear is a specific piece, and it is of an decent item item, meaning 685 at this current moment. Unless you raid you will only get 670 and it would be random. I don't want my alts to have to raid to get raid ready. It is as simple as that. My main might not need valor, but valor was insanely important to my enjoyment of my alts.

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    4. I play in a smaller Guild as the main tank, my alts were originally created to insta-queue guild-mates because my main was valor capping in 1-2 days.

      My first alt was a Prot-pally enchant/Tailor to take advantage of the dead mobs, extra blues and orbs. Next was a Prot-warrior/Gem/mine, then a Blood DK Alch/herb. Valor was a huge part of gearing these guys. By the end of cata two of my three alts out geared 80% of our A team raid group.

      But back then I was playing ALOT, and was cycling gear a bit (valor boots were BOE) after my main was geared. Even still they each averaged a little north of 390. I don’t think we realize just how much roll coins, individual loot, and follower missions (which rewards above the content the toon runs) has inflated gear scores. The guild no longer has alt runs, so they remain in the garrison at all times. One is 665, and the other is 670, at the end of cata that would have been 392 and 397 respectively, when my play time was heaviest. So I am gearing faster now than under the valor system, if less reliably.

      For me the loss of valor has been felt in the reduced amount of content I run with guildies. Without valor to cap-out there is no reason for us to group together, and being in a guild has just become talking on team-speak while switching garrison toons outside of raid days. Which is a huge issue, garrisons force you to login in every 8 hours with no available catch up if you don’t. However I only have meaningful content two days a week, which makes me feel like I am starving for content.

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    5. My main has had bad luck and I am only 683. Usually by this point I would be closer to 695 having downed normal and started heroic (now heroic and mythic). So my main is geared less than it usually is.

      As for my alts, I have one that raids often, my druid is the back up tank. I am only 674 on it. A few other of my alts are in the 660 range just from garrison stuff.

      Now compare that to what you are saying. If DS dropped 397 gear that means I would have at least 10 alts at 395 or better and my main would be pushing 405 at least.

      Now with the raid dropping 685 gear my main is not even that high. My alts, which compared should all be over 680 are not even remotely close. Heck, my main is geared like my alts should be.

      So no. Absolutely not. There is no gear explosion of item level from garrisons. Not even close to that. Unless you are insanely lucky with cache drops (I got the same two pieces 8 weeks in a row, both I did not need to begin with) and get your 21 kills on heroic on your alts so you can get 700 caches from missions, your alt will be geared like mine, in the 660 range which is WAY below entry level into the current raid, which drop 685.

      All I want is my alts to be ready to step into the current raid. Shouldn't need to kill 21 bosses to gear up so I can kill the 21 bosses to begin with. I do not want to raid to gear up for raids. It defeats the purpose of gearing up for a raid. My main is barely the item level to raid current content, much less my alts. Heck, most guides suggest 685 for BH and my main is not even that item level.

      Sorry, but I will have to agree to disagree here. Gearing is the worst it has ever been. Even more so knowing my main is geared worse than most of my alts should be at this point.

      Now, dismiss all my grumpyness over the gear to what you said about valor.

      Losing valor is losing content. Losing valor was such a huge loss for the game in terms that I do not even think blizzard can fully understand. It really hurt the game a lot. Valor grinding gave people a reason to log in, to play alts, valor was content. Losing it is hurting guilds. It is taking away the excitement of logging in on tuesdays. I don't even log on anymore on tuesday because we do not raid tuesday. No valor has me playing less and playing with fewer less. Not exactly a winning set up for an MMO.

      Removing valor hurt the game more than anything else they could have done to it.

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  5. Interesting take on that comment, I had not considered what it might mean for professions. There is no doubt, though, that WoD pretty much broke professions, and there just has to be a major rework of them in the next xpac.

    Among other changes, I definitely would like to see a return to real profession leveling. I recently changed one of my alts' profession from tailoring to herbalism, and I opted to not level it via the current zone catch up mechanism. I really had a great time visiting legacy zones to pick level-appropriate herbs.

    When I think about it, I'm not sure I would have fewer alts if everyone could have all/more professions. It's true that mine exist now mainly to support my hunters, but I do have fun when I play some of them. It's like a little vacation from huntering.

    Also, having suffered the pain of leveling them up, I would hate to just delete them. Most likely, I would keep the ones I really have fun with, delete a couple that I have no intention of playing, and roll new ones more frequently just for the experience of playing different classes and specs.

    Nice post, it really made me think.

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    1. A return to real leveling might be hard now with so many people having dropped gathering professions (despite me telling them not to, they should have listened) or switching professions so when the next expansion comes they might be skill level 240 or something. Blizzard really screwed themselves, the players and professions as a whole up this expansion and I don't see how they can fix it.

      I would still level them all as I like to have at least one of each class. But they would feel more like individuals now instead of mules.

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  6. IMHO multiple professions would be another nail into the coffin labeled "we do not want any social interaction with other players" :P

    Rauxis, chosen of CAT

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    1. Garrisons were the biggest nail in that coffin. Professions would just be a small one compared to that.

      It is also why I said they would need to go back to the old way where you actually needed to level professions instead of just use your garrison and the massive amount of resources to power level them.

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  7. I definitely desired to have every profession covered, but my first two alts were leveled simply because I saw others playing those classes and wanted to try them. They were both leveled during BC and I also used them to be able to raid with friends occasionally back when you were locked to a raid. I leveled a hunter during the end of Cata because I wanted to do the hunter pet challenges and collecting. It wasn't until Mists that I leveled all of my alts (2 of every class, one each faction) and that was mostly for increasing my odds for mounts after they added account wide mounts. If I was going to have all those alts I was going to make sure I covered every profession and speciality and I was working on covering every armor class with enchanting but didn't finish. I think account wide professions make sense, but I doubt they'll do that.

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    1. I did not get the alt bug until wrath, but that was probably because I never reached max level in BC and only had a hunter.

      I leveled a lot of hunters, even got the cape on 4 or 5 of them last expansion, just to do more soloing with to up my mount chances as well.

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  8. Blizzard trying to push people away from playing alts? Maybe because if people are leveling alts Blizz think they are "not playing properly" and raiding like a "proper player" should be doing.

    Okay, tinfoil hat stuff. But how much crack did Blizz smoke when they had their 'vision' of WoWs future?

    Is it just me or do Blizz look like they really have lost it? They seem to be flailing around like mad, clutching at straws all the time.

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    1. Blizzard is really pushing their "you must play this way and this way only" agenda a lot. The raid raid raid mentality that started in mists and got worse now shows that. If you are not raiding you are doing it wrong. They do seem to want us to play their way and not give any choices which kind of stinks if you ask me.

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    2. This has been tried before in other games though. And failed.

      If the customer comes in asking for a Big Mac and coke and the burger flipper said "That's eating wrong, you must have a Sh*tburger and a pint of Tramps Piss instead" they'd lose customers and lose jobs.

      Blizz are losing customers due to their arrogant "we know what you really want" attitude and their holier than thou contempt for the more casual players and altaholics.

      EVE Online... CCPs obsession with PVP and their conviction that "if you don't have someone stamping on your face and stealing your lollipops you are playing it wrong" has limited the growth of their game and they are now in a slow but steady decline in terms of active players (eve-offline.net shows this trend over the last few years).

      The customer choses what product to buy, and from whom. A customer cannot be forced to buy a product that no longer satisfies their entertainment needs. There are other vendors selling entertainment on this market.

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    3. And it is failing with warcraft too. Nearly 3 million last quarter and if not for their reversal of flight and the patch coming next week I am sure this quarter would have seen another substantial loss. They are moving in the wrong direction by giving people one real method to play. I think they need to go back to the mists format where there were a million and one things to do and ways to do them. Add that with the alt friendly wrath design for emblem gear and you have a winner. But they will not do that.

      They have really hurt their brand a lot this expansion and the damage is already done. Even though they revered their stance on flight and did so rather quickly, the fact it even became an issue where they wanted to tell everyone else how to play, shows they lost touch with their player base and the damage is done. Even the players that supported blizzard now realize blizzard does not support them.

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    4. You're spot on GE.

      Blizz have a very limited conception of what a WOW player is. I would have thought such a large business would have much better market research and a far more "in touch" vision with regards to the wants of their player base.

      They seem to have focused on one aspect of play (raid or die) to the exclusion of all the rest.

      Are they geniunely ignorant of the variety of playstyles? or are they really so deluded that they believe the trolling of the "special snowflake" fanboy warriors on the forums?

      It's interesting from my point of view, watching a big franchise maybe beginning to crumble. Maybe. They still have time to save things but they'll need to do a lot to get the trust of their customers back.

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    5. No king rules forever.

      Every company eventually makes a misstep and this expansion is a series of them. Could they learn from it? Yes. But if history has shown us anything they will not learn from it, or they will learn the wrong things from it. Like when they read the threads about people not liking dailies in mists they decided to remove dailies. They never actually read what people disliked about them. They never truly understood that people did not want dailies removed, they just wanted the gates the dailies had removed. So even when they try to learn, they usually read the wrong thing from feedback.

      Heck, look at flying. A massive amount of feedback, mostly in support of it. Lots of reasons given why people like flight and no reasons given why it should be removed, yet somehow they managed to read all those people saying they wanted flight to mean they should remove it. They just need a few smarter people working for them because reading comprehension is not their current strong point.

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    6. Comprehension and misunderstanding are key here.

      People liked vanilla. Not for the grinds but for the newness, so Blizz want to bring grinds back into WoD.

      People liked TBC for flying and it was still new then. So Blizz brought back in gating of heroics from it. Admittedly it's not rep gating, but heroics are useless without VPs anyway.

      Wrath... The last great Lore Expansion. I look at Wrath and WoD is nothing like it anymore.

      Cata... The hardcore players QQ about 'easymode' and 'welfare epics' in wrath so Blizz made 5-mans super hard and made lots of casuals and 'bads' very angry.

      Pandaland... I just hated it. Spent all my time levelling alts 1-80 instead.

      Basements of Paymore... I quit, it just sucked donkey balls. They hashed together the cheapest most "basement fanboy forum warrior" friendly crap they could and it's a joke.

      Seriously, something must be wrong when I've spent more time playing Sims 4 and FIFA 15 than I have playing WoW this year!

      Wow had something. A certain elusive spark that made it desirable to play, hooked you in with great lore without being too elitist about their pet raiders. This vanished, leaving just another shelf product sitting beside all the others.

      That, for me, is what has really changed. The spark is gone and it's just another wannabe, waiting to be dethroned by the next big thing.

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    7. The problem is that they changed it so much out of fear of become stale and they lost many of the things people liked that made them play to begin with.

      Some people like to believe the saying "change is good" but the fact is that change is not good. Never has been and never will be. Ask the people that made new coke and how it almost brought down the company. Change is not good.

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    8. Blizz seemed to have made changes to pander to the whims of the elitist forum warriors. Maybe i'm wrong but that's the way it seems. They were all that mattered to Blizz and the "No Fly No Buy" row caught them with their pants down as a result.

      CCP pandered to the whims of the nullsec pimp masters and their tame sociopaths. This is still going on and still causing slow but steady decay in their client base.

      Change is not necessarily bad, but it needs to be the right change. Forum warriors don't provide a representative cross section of the client base and this seems to be a very common mistake among MMO developers nowadays.

      The silent majority get ignored until the situation explodes and the shit hits the fan, by which time it may be too late.

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    9. Blizz seemed to have made changes to pander to the whims of the elitist forum warriors. Maybe i'm wrong but that's the way it seems. They were all that mattered to Blizz and the "No Fly No Buy" row caught them with their pants down as a result.

      CCP pandered to the whims of the nullsec pimp masters and their tame sociopaths. This is still going on and still causing slow but steady decay in their client base.

      Change is not necessarily bad, but it needs to be the right change. Forum warriors don't provide a representative cross section of the client base and this seems to be a very common mistake among MMO developers nowadays.

      The silent majority get ignored until the situation explodes and the shit hits the fan, by which time it may be too late.

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    10. The have been pandering to the 1% for the longest time. They do not seem to grasp the concept that the more accessible casual content is what made them a huge hit. Making everything for the 1% might give people something to aim for but it also discourages them when they do not get it time after time. Wrath had the perfect balance.

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  9. My cynical take was very different. I felt that Watcher was saying was with Alts and the Treasure Hunter traits that we were making too much gold.
    Too much gold makes the Token system fail since players are buying game time but few are buying in-game gold tokens: they don't need the gold.
    They have to fix the gold problem and that would be looking at the Alts.

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    1. It did have a main meaning toward garrisons, but I read more into it than just that. I do not think punishing the person that decided to level 20 alts is the way to handle the situation however, and that seems like what they intend to do.

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  10. Interesting. If Blizz doesn't completely drop the garrison idea in the next expac, I could see them going this direction. Mining and herbalism are pointless professions this expac. Why not make them just passive talents that we already know? First aid, cooking, herbalism... Only difference being, I could mine and pick posies while outside and about, instead of only while inside my garrison.

    The three 'profession' building garrison model is working well for me. My main, warlock, has tailoring and alchemy building, plus enchanting hut (for non-profession). (Sure, my main has made a piece of 640 cloth gear for my alt-priest (still at 92), but with this new model of only 3 crafted items, it's severely impacted doing really much more.) If only the enchanting could get rid of some of this non-wod drops that I have in my bags and not have to just vendor them, it would be perfect.

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    1. Mining and herbalism will be HUGE come 6.2 and this is why I've been telling people since launch, do not drop those professions. I saw it coming. You will need them to get fel blood which you need to create everything.

      Maybe the three building is a sort of hint to changing it to three professions? Nope, probably not, but it sounds good. ;)

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    2. It's Felblight and I anticipate at least twenty hours of "game time" to dredge this stuff up. I have two mains with three crafted items.
      I feel, to be successful, that I must do this as a priority in the most clumsy way - gathering.
      Or ... competitive fishing.

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    3. Yeah, I forgot they changed the name of it and noticed it after I posted. But I figured, everyone knows what I mean. ;)

      Competitive fishing sounds fun. My main has a gathering profession and will be there grinding reputation, so I will gather and grind. Doing two things at once makes it less painful. I'll find a space where herbs spawn well and just camp that area killing all the rares that pop up to get the reputation tokens. Two birds meet one stone.

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  11. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    In as much as I pay as little attention to how Blizzard wants me to play as I do and rather much adjust and adapt whatever is provided to make my own way to having fun in the game, I know that I will continue with my army of alts. Even my bank alts get played, and one of them took advantage of the level 90 free boost, just so I could get the Garrison setup for her to conduct her business as a bank alt.

    For me, I treat my characters as part of a co-op, sharing resources and sharing profits. I take as much pleasure in getting an alt another level or a skill progression or a new piece of gear as I do any character that might be called my main. Before the guild leveling elimination, I was using that as a vital part of how I played my alts also, moving characters to reinforce the leveling of a guild as opposed to another. (I have two fully private guilds, and another that I share with my wife, in addition to the main guild of which Grumpy and I are both part of.)

    Speaking of which, I have at least three characters on my active server that qualify as my main. The original is my first character, a paladin which was my main for the original game. In the Burning Crusade, my (primary) priest took over that spot, and was first to level cap for that expansion, as well as Wrath and Cata. When Mists was released, I rolled a monk right off to start and by the time she was level 20, she was my main for the rest of that expansion. In turn, with the release of WoD, my paladin is back in the driver's seat for main status. Main versus alt does not even come close to describing my play style. Of course I am an outlier I would guess, but even so...

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    1. There is a reason many refer to it as an alt army, because it is one group effort. While all of mine were made to support my main they all became part of the army in their own way.

      My main has always been a hunter. I've had times where I played certain alts a lot, but they never moved up to main status in my mind. Maybe main tank or main healer, but not main.

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  12. I originally created my alts as bank alts and to cover the professions.

    Then I learned I still had to level them in order to level their professions... so I just used them as pack mules... I could always afford whatever I needed for my main just because I wasn't an idiot with my gold.

    Then I got into flipping xmog gear during cata and made a bunch of gold... The army of alts were quite useful with all their bag/bank space. I even bought a guild during MoP to have a big guild bank on one of them.

    I finally leveled an actual alt in Cata thinking that I might learn to tank (Blood DK that had been sitting at 60 or so forever...). I liked Blood DPS back when it was a thing, so I thought Blood could be OK. I never got into tanking though so didn't play it much. I tanked a few dungeons with guildies and stuff, but that was about it. Otherwise, I played it as DPS.

    In MoP, I leveled up the DK, a mage, and a druid since I was bored. I boosted a priest as well. I was thinking that I might get into gold making using professions.

    However, WoD destroyed professions... so I didn't really do anything with my alts at first.

    Now, I have 3 toons parked in their garrisons slowly leveling up (DK and priest are 99, mage is 95) just doing their daily profession CDs and garrison crap. I have several low lvl alts parked in Ironforge and Stormwind that handle all of my auctions.

    If I could have all profs on my hunter, I'd probably still level up the DK, but I probably wouldn't bother to level the others. I'd just use them as auction/pack mules which is basically what they are now anyway.

    To put things in perspective though, I have 10 toons on my main server (I never log in on the couple of other so they don't really count...): 70% of my /played is on my main and much of that remaining 30% was probably spent at the AH on alts, so I'm not really an alt player anyway.

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    1. Anon, Grumpy's former Eagle Scout Leader.

      There are several in my guild. We decided that we were not building an empire; we were building a factory.
      Alts with the pure job description of professions and amassing followers with treasure hunter traits -- because this was the way the game was designed! Who could not see that that this function was in place and meant to be (exploited is the wrong word) invested in?

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    2. My bank alt with their own guild bank has been max level in every expansion I had a max level in. I think I am one of the only weirdos that could say that. I always leveled my alts anyway, so having to level them for professions did not matter to me. I actually like to level characters so it was never an issue for me.

      @Anon

      Blizzard is who. They are the people that made gold missions spawn too often. They are the ones that said, it is giving too much gold so they nerfed the gold a little bit. And then to cap it off, they are the ones that added treasure hunters which in turn made it 10 times worse than it was before the nerf.

      Blizzard does not think. One hand does not know what the other one is doing. It is hard to believe that the same people that said it was giving too much gold created treasure hunters. How is it even possible that they did not notice this would make it worse? A third grade child could have told them that.

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    3. To make matters worse, I saw they just doubled the gold rewards from the Blingtron garrison mission... They're talking about nerfing the gold rewards and they give one a huge buff instead... Idiots...

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    4. I got a kick out of seeing that. Just days after saying that the needed to lower the gold from missions they double the gold from the largest gold giving missions.

      The left hand is not talking to the right hand again. Mismanagement, nothing else. They really need to have someone in charge over there.

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  13. I'm pretty sure he meant that one shouldn't be compelled to make such an alt army and I agree because with all this garrison gold missions I certainly am. I dont quite understand why are you so focused on professions when it is not a big problem to buy or trade anything you need on AH or in trade chat. After a few months after expansion launch I dont really craft chants for myself, though at the launch I made thousands on these scrolls.

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    1. Anon, Grumpy's former First Grade Teacher;

      Compelled? No way. Making a simple system work in our favor, absolutely. There are no big problems. With the merger of servers, the numbers of alts that pay homage to our mains is limitless. I don't think, in spite of what Watcher says, that Alts feeding Mains is a problem --- there must be more.

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    2. I knew it was more so referring to the garrison alts, but alts mean so much more than just that. And I don't know about others, but I do not feel compelled to get more 100s just to do garrisons. Actually, it is quite the contrary for me. I have less 100s now than I normally would because I do not want to level them because I do not want to do the garrison with them. I know if I did level them I would feel compelled to use them to make gold and I do not want to make more work for myself.

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  14. I didn't really take what he said that way. I think what they were trying to say was that they didn't want people levelling alts to serve their mains - and didn't want people to HAVE to play alts to be able to enjoy one toon - rather than take away the experience of levelling alts just because they enjoy playing different classes. I have no alts, and I fully admit that I am not self sufficient and spend lots of time bartering my goods and services to get the items and things that I need. I have never felt that I needed alts to help my toon with gear or mats. So I think if you just look at that alt, rather than seeing the "multiple alts shouldn't exist" it's the "exist to serve your main character" which is the mentality they are trying to get rid of, I think.

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    1. I believe he was talking more about the people creating and leveling tons of alts to level 100 to get gold from the garrison. I just read professions into it because to me, that is what alts were original created for. That and some extra bag space to save all the junk we collect.

      I am amazed that there are still people that do not have alts. If people did not break into the alt thing in wrath, which was the most alt friendly expansion in my opinion, I would have been sure they did in the later expansions. This one even more so being there is really not much else to do end up except raid.

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  15. Playing alts to get some different class experience - the fighting styles really differ. So far, 6 Alliance and 5 Horde DPS raiding LFR Foundry and over 650 ilvl, ready for Hellfire.

    Reason why so many? Different pieces of Lore (faction wise), different fighting styles, different races. No mules or grinders, love them equally as Characters, love to pick from 11 which I feel like playing tonight. Frozen streams of ice mage? Getting some heavy lava-axe work with shaman? Shield slamming with warrior? Power of the stars of raven druid?

    Of course they have different professions as well. They are 2 small guilds in itself, rarely using AH or guild bank for gear and improvements. But that's not the point.

    Blizzes succesfully killed gathering in WoD. Fingers crossed, I hope they won't kill craft as well. If one toon happens to learn all professions, AH is suddenly dead. Why bother buying when you can craft and gather everything?...

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    1. I like to see how all the different classes play as well. It is also why I always have at least one maxed horde even if I predominately play alliance. I like to see both sides of the story. In mists this was particularly big as the horde story did differ in some places from alliance.

      I think it is true the AH would take a massive hit. But it is not all bad. There are a great many people that never even level their professions now so you can be sure they would not level more of them if they had them. Over the years as a raid leader I have had to get on many players that did not have leveled professions and some no professions even trained. Of course that was when professions meant something to battle and they do not now. That reason is another one why I could see this happening. Being professions do not offer a bonus any longer it is less punishing to those that do not learn them, so having us learn them all does not hurt those that do not.

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    2. IMO, and I may be a single voice on this, I miss professions the way they were. I liked that professions had a raiding benefit. The only thing I think Blizzard should have changed in regards to that is given gathering professions the same choice they gave to JC or Enchanters or any other crafting profession (you know, the choice between "+XX to Intellect" or "+XX to Strength", etc.).

      Personally I just want them to bring back professions as they were with that one difference - to add choice for the gathering professions as well. That used to be a thing for our guild, that your raiding toon had to have 2 crafting professions and those professions had to be at the level that they could benefit from the "+XX to Agility" or what have you. I don't know, I just liked it better the way it was. Grinding out leather from turtles and herbing on my Tauren Druid when I was bored was fun.

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    3. I agree with you. I miss them as was, harder to level and rewarding with a stat bonus if you did level them. I saw noting wrong with that design.

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  16. My alts came about by trying to find just the right fit. Oddly both my first Feral Druid and Warlock were pretty quickly deleted. I think it was back when you didn't get feral until 25 or 30 and the Warlock was back when you had to drain creatures to get whatever it was.

    Never occurred to me to create crafting alts but AFTER I had one of each I realized it was helpful for saving money. I'm not that great at making it so being frugal was a plus.

    Don't blame Kam for the mind reading, I think it's her Balance & Restoration Druid who does that!

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    1. The best way to make money is to not spend it. Sounds rather simple, but it really is. My horde hunter that is alone on their server never seems to be able to build much gold because I have to buy everything but my alliance hunter with a full leveled up alt army never has to make a thing. Everything is provided for him. So he never spends anything. No wonder he has made over 500K this expansion alone and my horde hunter is just a slim 7K over what he started the expansion with.

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  17. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    LOL, really your former eagle scout leader and your first grade teacher...

    I use the line I use simply because I don't want to be anonymous, and yet at the same time I have to maintain the cover of not being identified online (to our mutual guildmates) for Grumpy's sake of being forthright in his postings. So, Grumpy, if you really have both your former eagle scout leader and your first grade teacher playing, more power to ya, but somehow I doubt it is the case. On the other hand, WoW has been a big game for a long time now, so I won't discount the possibility of both actually being what they claimed and not just a play off of my chosen posting name.

    I really don't much care for the current modifications to the professions. Gathering is one of my favorite things to do, regardless of the items gathered. Where others get bored silly flying continuous loops to get resources, I find it relaxing and immersive. In regards to the crafting profession, I love to make things and sell them in game. One of my characters, a blacksmith/leather worker, uses his nearly complete older knowledge to craft lower level items for transmog purposes as well as things like a mithril cylinder just so there will be one or two of them on the AH at a somewhat reasonable price. I treat the odd quest items like that as a community service and the older transmog items as a source of profit.

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    1. I always liked going out and flying around doing my gathering as well. It was a soothing and relaxing thing to do. It is also why all my damage dealers have one gathering profession, to give them something to do while waiting in queue. Removing flight, to me, was just blizzard removing content.

      I used to do that as well, sell the things needed for quests at a reasonable price. Hated when I was leveling and seeing a mithril casing I needed for 200 gold back when 200 gold might as well have been 2 million. So I always made sure when I was leveling a professions to make things needed for quests to level and then i sell them reasonable on the AH for others that were leveling. I wish more people did that instead of trying to milk people. But to each their own.

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