Quite often when you read the forums you’ll hear how many people have felt that Mist of Pandaria has not been alt friendly. The grind in this expansion at the start has been quite harsh with the reputation, low valor points and ungenerous loot system in place. Not to mention the extremely tedious questing required to max level your toons. Once you complete your first toon, you feel as though your soul was plucked from you and you may very well never want to go through that experience again.
With patch 5.2 out, some of these issues have been corrected such as selecting a faction for doing reputation grinds through heroics, the increased drop rates from LFR, increased ilvl from crafted PVP gear, the work orders from the farm or bonus experience gained through pet battles (although this aspect has reportedly been seriously nerfed). That all said, the idea of handling alts still can be intimidating as the game can be overwhelming with all the different options available to you.
Of course, if you’re an alt-a-holic like myself, you might get that itch to work on other classes as your main either starts to feel stale or other reasons (like professions). But how can you manage handling so many possible alts and dealing with the reputation grind? Like everything in life this all boils down to time management and organization skills.
The biggest issue in the game that many people have is the idea of leveling. Many people hate the process because it’s a giant chore and they simply want to get to the end where supposedly all the fun exist. The issue here is not leveling but the types of people who hate leveling. Leveling is very task oriented and can be extremely tedious. Going from 1-90 mentally can be exhausting and overwhelming. So it really boils down to a psychological game of discipline.
The problem I see is that most people lack the focus to level. But it’s really funny to me because some of these people end up doing task repeatedly (and it seems that a lot of PVPers especially are like this). I think for these people they never try to set goals/milestones for themselves as they level. For instance, take 85-90 at the moment. Each level/area can be quite arduous due to the unbelievable number of quests available. Some areas like The Jade Forest and Valley of the Four Winds feel as though they take forever and certain quests end up being annoying, making one feel as though the game takes decades to complete.
While the number of quests are indeed huge, the secret for me is to set certain milestones as I play through them. With 4 more 85s waiting around and a level 87 that I’m working on, the method I’ve developed is attempting to complete one level or zone per day. Once I hit one goal or the other, I stop and switch off for a while. But by giving myself those milestones, I pretty much push myself then ease up to keep myself from mentally burning out.
During Cataclysm, the way I would level was very similar. Usually, I would focus on an area or two at a time as opposed to a fix number of levels. Pre-BC areas provides enough experience for around 5 levels a zone, give or take. Generally, you still would face the same number of quests, some with similar levels of difficulty (or annoyance). I think the primary difference has been the health of mobs and the time it takes to down them. Combining that with instance grinding, you easily could zoom up several levels at a time. Once you hit 58, you can just instance grind with some questing and get anywhere between 2-3 levels a day. Even Wrath content combined with instance grinding can provide 2-3 levels a day without being a completionist.
Also, I don’t do everyone simultaneously. I go in tracks where I’ll work on one toon for a bit then switch after a certain point and work on another toon. For instance, my paladin is barely being used at the moment since I’m focused more on improving my shaman. Because my paladin’s gear is reasonable, I think it’s more efficient expanding on my shaman’s gear and professions for a while rather than squeezing every little point from my paladin. In that sense, I’ll do more dailies so I can push my shaman’s reputation up, especially with important factions like the Golden Lotus.
While I do that, I’m also leveling my warlock. Leveling takes the most time because the quests for leveling tend to be lengthier than dailies and that there’s just a lot more for every zone compared to the number of dailies. I can’t do all of the above every day though because it’ll overwhelm me. So I end up sacrificing a few toons while I work on lower priority toons.
What I’ve come to realize is that you can’t expect to do everything with everyone in a single day. It’s very taxing mentally and physically. I find myself having eye strains, occasional headaches and become sleepy. When that happens, I’ll take extended breaks to keep myself fresh. It may seem like common sense but again it’s realizing how gaming like this can affect you. It’s easy to stop once you lose momentum and move to something different. But you need to eventually return to this task if you ever want to move forward.
The thing that keeps me going again are my goals. I look forward to hitting 90 (or whatever the level cap is) because the process of doing things faster initially feels fresh. Of course, I might leave a few stones unturned but the thing is that you can still go back. But the fun thing for me is watching the progress of my characters grow and getting into things like Galleon and Sha of Anger runs and seeing how things change from one style of play to another.
Also, seeing how my toons can work together is a big motivator. I ended up becoming an alt-a-holic when I realized that the auction house on Saurfang was overpriced. Being someone that hates depending on others, I set a goal to minimize my spending and dependence on the auction house. As I mentioned before, it’s going to be close to impossible but at a certain point it’ll hurt really hard in the pocket. But having alts with maxed out professions for the most part frees me from spending unnecessary gold and focus on using that gold for things that I cannot obtain or would normally spend months obtaining. At the same time, having all these professions available allows me to become very useful to my guild where I can provide others who are not as privileged enchants, gems, glyphs or gear that they may need.
With these motivators and goals in place, I have no problems re-doing content. Yes, it gets boring and tedious after a while, but once you’re on your 3rd alt, things seem to move a lot faster. I like having numerous options and playing this many alts provide me the options to continue leveling and gearing them.
Lastly, managing and leveling multiple alts can be a positive thing for yourself in some ways. I see it as a way to help focus your thinking and it acts as a reflection device for seeing what kind of person you are. I feel that the people who have problems hitting 90 are those that lack any kind of focus in their life. Without basic discipline and the ability to set goals for oneself, you will find it impossible to handle simple tasks on a day-to-day basis.