Welcome back folks, we’ve got another budding author that has an interesting point of view to share with us, I’d like you all to welcome Wicked to our writing staff, go easy on him. -Agorg-

The Alt-o-holics’ Casual corner.

The time comes once in a while for us all to reflect back on our past and present and realize the sort of player we are and what we wish to be.

Hello. My name is Wicked, and I am an Altoholic.

altoholic3_3
The game of World of Warcraft has made exponential changes and advances since its early origin’s in November 2004. While patch 3.3 was looming menacingly over our heads, some people were scrambling to get toons leveled up, geared up, and tweaked to be ready to Dominate the new instances.  With good reason, each expansion and big patch has changed the various classes and their roles in the game, and at times it can be learning the game all over again, some people hate it, I happen to like it. You see I am a member of the vast legion of players known as: The Altoholics.

Some players live to raid. They get a single character to level 80 then spend every single moment online devoted to getting it better geared. They endlessly grind reputation, earn badges, farm mats and all the other mayhem associated with obtaining better gear. Their out of game time is spent tweaking stats in spreadsheets at work trying to find the best combination or gear or rotations to dominate the next raid.

Other players just get in game to hang out with like minded friends, do a little questing, and just generally have fun. They often do not have any particular goal in mind for their playtime beyond that simple pursuit.

Then there are the Altoholics. We are those guys that seem to play all day and night for days on end, yet only have one or two quest geared 80’s to our names. No fancy epic or badge gear, maybe not even a single epic flying mount. We rarely raid, yet we are always online playing one of countless toons.

We are the people that complain to blizzard that 10 toons slots is just not enough. Seriously how can you have one of every toon and still follow Gavin’s Advice of having a banker and mule with only 10 slots? It’s preposterous!

altoholic3_3a500 

A typical altoholic routinely spends no more than a few days or a week on the same toon. The reasons for this can be as varied as the character names. A few common ones are;

  • Some people toon hop because they are following DYS’s advice of never leveling outside of rested XP. That is probably the BEST way to maximize leveling efficiency in the game outside of the RAF program, more on that little gem in another article.

  • After a time toon hopping like this players often fall into another trap as it were, though it really is more of an addiction. Who doesn’t like to go ding as often as possible, it is seriously addictive!!

  • Others just flat get bored very easy. A Few days playing the same toon and we run by another class and go “Oh I have one of those, wonder what his rest xp and trade skills are like?”

  • Some of us hop toon when we find guild mates, or friends of almost the same level. Or We hop to and alt to help another player or guildie and stay on the toon for a while afterwards

However at the root of every altoholic is a true love of this game universe that Blizzard has created for us. It brings us back for more until we fall asleep at our keyboards, and then has us daydreaming about it all day at work/school. It is the reason we fork out $15.00/month regardless of the economy. The love of the game has us searching for the next toon to play when we feel the tingle of boredom creeping in. The love of the game has guilds like Dominate resurrecting and reinventing themselves as outlined in Agorg’s Lifecycle of a guild article . The love of the game has altoholics like myself paying $25.00 per toon to change servers and move all of our horde alts to Fenris to join Dominate. Their format for the guild just makes sense, and any true altoholic can’t ignore a good guild when they see one.

Keep your weapons handy and, as always, DOMINATE

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>