We let our alts go on 20 mans and MC runs with other guilds and have farther progressed guilds raid with us on their alts. Seems like a nice medium, we get and give help, and gear is given in return. Just gotta let it be known that the guild raid schedule comes first. We also encourage people to play alts during off time to learn new classes and fight burnout. The only real negative i've seen is when they like the alt more than the main.
We let our alts go on 20 mans and MC runs with other guilds and have farther progressed guilds raid with us on their alts. Seems like a nice medium, we get and give help, and gear is given in return. Just gotta let it be known that the guild raid schedule comes first. We also encourage people to play alts during off time to learn new classes and fight burnout. The only real negative i've seen is when they like the alt more than the main.
^ Precisely.
Regarding an addon for management at least (I doubt Blizzard will do anything akin to what's suggested in terms of shared bank space, etc), Sanity is another good one I recently found (used to use BankStatement, though I still do sometimes because it's visually better for me sometimes).
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
Rested XP once a week for an hour x 5 characters = nice stable of transmute / mooncloth alts. Thank goodness for Cenarion Hold, finally a Horde-accessable mailbox within 20 minutes of a moonwell.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
I never understood the practice of not guilding an alt. I only see the advantage of knowing that a guildie is on an alt (provided you aren't guilding every bank alt/mule character) and available if you need them.
Likewise - what is the purpose of restricting guilded alts? Discouragement from playing them?
The two notable positives to alts:
1. Variety is fun for some people; fun prevents burnout.
2. Playing an alternate role leads to increased understanding of that role.
Unless you're having issues over loot for alts - mostly a seperate issue, in my opinion - there doesn't seem to be a downside to alts. Got to have someone to collect those Rend/Ony/ZG buffs, too!
If someone has a stable full of level 4 and 5 alts that they like to screw around with once a year, it clutters up the guild list and can make it hard to find people in the list offline.
We allow as many 60 alts as you want to tag, and one non-60 alt. Works pretty well- you keep the alt 60's close at hand and most people only ever want to level one non-60 at a time, so it's easy for them to pick one and say This one! We're also very open with kicking and inviting new alts whenever there's an officer online (anytime our players want to change thier guilded alts is fine) so it's even convenient to keep up with whatever new obsession your local alt nut is leveling this week.
BSG Reference Sheet
in EJBSG 10 -My instincts tell me that we cannot sacrifice democracy just because the president makes a bad decision.
All my bank/farm characters are on a second account. I use a mage to fish stonescale/nightfin and gather herbs, it's a great way to spend time when flying or waiting on a raid to start. All of them are not in my guild, but they get invited to various goofy guilds on the server and it's kind of humorous sometimes.
Would I ever raid with another character? No way. I am lucky in that I adore the Priest and healing role and I learn something new and try to improve everyday. I feel there is always something I could do to better my toon, but then again I am a late start to the raiding game (we are up to Huhu in AQ40 with 2 Nef kills under our belt). I imagine people who are still on the same server or in the same guild since release might be a little more "complete" than me with their main. :)
If I feel bored with the game I take a night and play another game instead of an alt, makes it all the more refreshing to come back. I'm glad others can find fun in an alt but it's just not for me.
Likewise - what is the purpose of restricting guilded alts? Discouragement from playing them?
500 character softcap on guild size. Once you go over that the guild management tools stop working correctly. We just purge alts every time we go over 500. An officer just sorts the guild list by last played and starts booting from the bottom. I think the last time it happened we were down to 1-month.
With 25man raiding just around the corner, a lot of folk have speculated that raid stacking or balance becomes much more crucial for success than with the current 40man content.
Short of keeping a proportionally much larger 'bench' or 'standby' group of people, do folk see that having a couple of well geared and experienced alts in the guild would be an asset to progression raiding? Ensuring that the proper class balance can always be maintained with fewer actual people.
I know a lot of folk despise alts and whatnot, but I can count many times where we have had a war relog an alt priest (insert any combo here) so that we had the right number of healers to succeed. Often the difference is whether we kill the boss, or cancel the raid. I hear folk doing the same for 4H, logging alt wars to make the required raid balance.
I'm curious to hear other people's thoughs on how TBC might impact the use (nor non-use) of alts for progression.
Personally I'd love a feature that would let you queue a BG on your main and log on an alt while remaining in queue. When your queue comes up you'd get a pop up saying "You are now eligible to join Warsong Gulch 42 with <Charcter Name>. Would you like to log off?" and you'd have about a minute to log off and log on your main.
do folk see that having a couple of well geared and experienced alts in the guild would be an asset to progression raiding?
The main question is, how did those alts get geared? Did it come at the expense of somebody else's main? Did you have to spend more time in MC than you could have just to gear an alt? Gearing two characters rather than one always carries oppurtunity costs.
The best success we have had with alts is when an active player left, and let another member use his character, that the guild had already geared. That is just salvaging guild raiding investment to some extent.
My experience is, once the door is open to raid on alts, everybody can and will want to bring them to a raid. And they don't always necessarily have the guild's long term best interest in mind. Pretty soon it's 50% alts, and the other 20 get sick of gearing up somebody else's 3rd alt in an instance they don't want to be in anymore anyway.
I think you'll find that "stacking the raid" is a bit easier in a 25 man raid. Going from 3 warriors to 5 warriors is a lot smaller jump than going from 6 warriors to 8 warriors in terms of gearing them up / finding good warriors.
Currently to stack a raid we generally box the classes that are needed. I'd imagine we'd do the same come expansion.
Personally I'd love a feature that would let you queue a BG on your main and log on an alt while remaining in queue. When your queue comes up you'd get a pop up saying "You are now eligible to join Warsong Gulch 42 with <Charcter Name>. Would you like to log off?" and you'd have about a minute to log off and log on your main.
/sign
I'd love that. My enchanter is my priest alt, and it's always annoying to see someone in trade wanting one of the more expensive enchants that I know but I'm 5 minutes away from AV popping.
The main question is, how did those alts get geared? Did it come at the expense of somebody else's main? Did you have to spend more time in MC than you could have just to gear an alt? Gearing two characters rather than one always carries oppurtunity costs.
My experience is, once the door is open to raid on alts, everybody can and will want to bring them to a raid. And they don't always necessarily have the guild's long term best interest in mind. Pretty soon it's 50% alts, and the other 20 get sick of gearing up somebody else's 3rd alt in an instance they don't want to be in anymore anyway.
I don't think alts are often geared at a main's expense, though it's a possibility. Overall I think it's a plus mainly for a reason that's already been mentioned: it helps active players stay active and interested in the game. If you're still running MC even though you need absolutely nothing then you will hit the limit of your altruism at some point or another. You can't do it forever just for the greater good. Alts are a great way to still participate and help others get geared while still having fun through either the possibility of getting your alt some gear or just playing another class.
Diving into your example, I would assume that the 50% alts are only playing alts because their mains are already geared. If 50% are alts and 50% don't want to be there(they don't need gear) then why are they there at all if 100% of the mains don't need anything? Using a common example like MC, it's better in my opinion that 20 people go on alts(who otherwise would not have gone or would be bored) and 20 people go who need gear like Rag drops than for the raid not to happen at all. At least then some people are benefitting and all are enjoying themselves.
As long as your guild has your priorities straight between alts and mains, I think there's little room for dispute and drama.
do folk see that having a couple of well geared and experienced alts in the guild would be an asset to progression raiding?
The main question is, how did those alts get geared? Did it come at the expense of somebody else's main? Did you have to spend more time in MC than you could have just to gear an alt? Gearing two characters rather than one always carries oppurtunity costs.
In my case I geared up my warlock alt over a 8 week period in MC when we had 0-2 Warlock mains and we managed to reduce the number of mains without t2 pants from 10 to 5 over that period. About the the only peice of gear you could say I took at the expense of a main was staff of the ruins over a Mage who has been "next" on the list for Staff of the Shadow flame for 4 months. At the ZG/Aq20 level its pretty much at the disgression of the Raid leader and refusing to get on your main if requested is a pretty good way to never being able to bring your alt again. We stack warlock alts for moam:).
At BWL and on its mainly Dwarf Priests and Paladins alts and its purely by request of the Class Leader
I would say my level 56 Blue geared hunter out farms my T2/3 Holy/Protection Paladin let alone my Epic geared PVP Warlock.
I have been begging for this for years in Diablo 2 and now I am begging again for WoW. We need some per-account storage. Some universally accessible bank slots. We also need that for guilds as many have pointed out, but lets start with baby steps...
I’ve levelled up 2 warlocks to 60 and 1 to 30... Though I’m not sure they count as alts, but more as new mains (changed time zones, US -> EU).
One thing I always wanted was some kind of linked reputation between characters, since getting exalted with factions like ZG on two (or more) characters is a near impossibility, but I guess that’s the pinnacle of optimism.
Though, resto druids and shaman are free to make a class that can actually farm up cash, but they still shouldn't raid!
Are Protection warriors with a Mortal Strike warrior alt allowed? The ability to sometimes beat a caster is better than the certainty of losing to any green/blue geared level 55+ one ;) I dont raid on the alt, however. Alts in raids are evil.
We run "Alt-MC" and soon "Alt-BWL" as a way to have raids on our days off that people can attend, have fun in, and get gear in, but not have the drudgery of doing MC AGAIN on their Main. We never gear alts over mains, and we do sell everything we can to benefit the raid so we have cash for pots and repairs in Naxx.
Also, my alt is rank 10 and %70 through rank 11, so I do quite a lot of pvp on the alt, etc. Of course, I'm alliance and my pvp alt is horde, but still.
Many of us play alts to stay sane. I am SO sick of my mage in PvE its almost sad, but I do LOVE playing my rogue. C'est la vie.
10/03/06, 4:12 PM
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