World of Warcraft: The Pros and Cons of Alt-A-Holicism

As someone who has played RPGs for a long time, I’m someone who enjoys trying out different classes to see the difference in game play. In World of Warcraft, they call my style of play Alt-A-Holicism. Maybe some people stigmatize the idea of playing numerous alts, but it has its share of benefits as well as problems. Having fully leveled and geared 10 different alts, I wanted to delve into this topic of Alt-A-Holicism in the context of World of Warcraft and split up the advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

• You get to truly understand the different mechanics of each class. This aspect is incredibly useful in PVP since you eventually understand how one ability can be countered by another. However, it’s also useful for PVE not just for yourself, but in group settings where you might be forced to micromanage other people in certain encounters.
• The leveling process gradually becomes easier and faster over time. Whether you quest or instance grind (or do a combination of the two), you eventually get faster and faster since the content is more or less the same.
• You amass quite a bit of wealth. Questing alone can rack you up enormous bundles of gold. Once you have all your basics set (e.g. gear, riding, professions, etc.), your future rewards end up becoming pure profits. For instance, I’m at the point where I have nothing to buy (thank god!) and am saving all my gold. I use a lot of my mats to craft epics, which sell nicely on the Auction House.
• You become less sensitive to bad drops. I think people who exclusively play a single toon might end up feeling quite often that they receive the short end of the stick while gearing (especially if they use LFR). When you have multiple toons, you have less disappointment because the odds of receiving gear is much higher overall. Once you complete whatever LFRs and tasks for one toon, you just switch over to another one and continue.
• You end up creating a team that works together and you gain independence from others and the Auction House. In short, if you provide each toon with professions that do not overlap or focus on gathering, you easily compliment the rest of your toons and eventually provide your own industry. Farms are a great example of where you can plan out the distribution of materials between toons.
• “Self power leveling” becomes an interesting option. What is “self power leveling?” This is where one overpowered toon (say a death knight) can be used to clean up an area filled with adds, thus making questing easier overall. It’s not necessarily the same as getting run through lower level instances. But take certain areas in Mist of Pandaria for instance where you have high mob density and your lower level toon might not have the damage output nor survivability to handle certain packs. Your OP toon can clear up the add heavier spots so that your leveling toon can grab important quest items, expediting your questing process.
• Increased familiarity with other aspects of the game such as LFR/LFG. When you do LFR on a daily basis (like I do), eventually you get to the point where each fight becomes insanely easy. Certain mechanics that require practice become second nature because you’re seeing the content consistently. Instead, you start focusing on improving what you can do in those encounters rather than struggling with the basic mechanics.
• I find it character building for the individual as well. That is, people who have the patience to level numerous alts are those who are committed to setting goals and managing to complete them. Most people in the game have problems just leveling a single toon. The most common excuse I’ve heard from those people is that they suffer from ADD. So being able to concentrate and finish up leveling multiple toons and gearing them is inherently a good quality as (once they finish up World of Warcraft…permanently) these people will be able to more than likely handle successful careers in jobs that require a high degree of concentration.
• Just having more options. I like having the freedom to choose any toon to help a party out. If someone goes, “Hey, we need a plate wearer” or “Hey, we need someone that can lust,” I will be able to provide that player to the team.

Disadvantages

• High repetition. The thing that makes Alt-A-Holicism great is the same thing that makes it horribly boring. You will be doing the same thing over and over and this can possibly lead to burn out.
• High time consumption. To really get anything from Alt-A-Holicism, you pretty much need to invest a lot of time into this. The way Mist of Pandaria is structured, it’s hard to be productive considering how many time sinks are put into the game.
• Lack of focus on a single toon. This may seem obvious but if you have a favorite toon, more than likely you should say goodbye to him/her. It becomes impossible to complete all the different end game content on a single toon such as PVP, pet battles, dailies, etc.
• It takes a long time before you see any return. The idea of having a return also here is extremely subjective. For instance, it might be spending gold upfront.
• You’ll have to be content not being able to do every single toon every week. Realistically, it’ll probably take 1.5 man days to complete all the basics for a single toon. That might mean dailies, getting coins, running LFR, etc. (at least that’s how it is for me). At least, when it comes to gearing and running LFR and maxing out on Valor, I feel that it takes roughly a day of dedication to really finish one toon. And day I mean roughly 5-8 hours total.

The thing to me is that you should try different classes just to experience them. But it’s really hard to judge what you’ll like without a great deal of dedication. Just leveling a toon to 10-20 isn’t enough to get a good feeling of how a class operates. Honestly though, at the end of the day, classes themselves are nothing more than something like a massive, complex Venn Diagram where abilities overlap and that one ability really is like another with a different cooldown or affect here and there.  So hopefully, this little post will provide you a better decision if you’re looking into trying numerous alts.

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