No Alts Allowed!
Posted March 4th, 2008 by Isobelle
Here’s something I’ve never understood: 90% of guilds I come across
tend to have a rigid and unfriendly stance on having alts in the guild.
Oh, feel free to roll one, and we’ll throw you a ginvite so you can
listen in on guild chat while you’re on it, but god help you if you
ever expect to bring it on a raid. To me this seems counter productive
to progress in general.
Let’s take Karazhan just for example, since most people are
petty familiar with it. Attumen needs two tanks, Moroes leans heavily on CC
(shackles, fears, traps), and Maiden is a decurse heavy, melee-unfriendly
fight. Yes, I know I can tank Attumen alone, and DPS Maiden on my rogue just
fine, but I’m making a point here, Just shut up and read, damn it. While
obviously those three bosses still lean towards a certain raid structure, what
should happen if there are already two rogues in the raid and one of the rogues
has a spare priest for Maiden? You could use the rogue and just suck it up, but
since when is ‘sucking it up’ awesome guild policy?
I’m biased, obviously, since I’ve rolled a prot tank, combat rogue, and healing
druid to 70 in the hopes that I can fill any raid slot that needed filling in
such situations. I hardly rolled the three classes thinking ‘oh boy just think,
no matter what drops, I can ROLL, yeah!’, but that seems to be the consensus
for people with one toon. Even, ridiculously, in guilds that use DKP systems,
the norm tends to be that alts are awarded DKP separately based on the toon
doing the encounter. Call me crazy, but in NASCAR, they don’t give the trophy to the
car, do they? I’m pretty sure they give it to the driver.
DKP is a measure of time spent working towards progression, so if you require
my tank for this fight even though my rogue is my main, and I agree to bring
it, then I’m basically just throwing money into wipes for no point? Okay, guild
progression, yes… but then I have to throw my tank back on the shelf the
instant the fight is over, until it’s formally requested again? The ugly dragon
named Loot-Whorism rears its head, because everyone just thinks people with
more than one toon are looking for more than one chance to roll, but unless
you’re dual-boxing, it never actually happens that one person will be rolling
twice for the same item or set of drops.
The alternative is to just join two guilds, and not even tell your guild that
Clark Kent the Holy Priest really is Superman the Uber Tank also, but when one
is named Ixobelle, and the other is Izobelle, and they both are undead females
with the same face, hair, and skin tone, and both turn the helm and cloak
graphic off, it’s a bit much to write off to coincidence. They'll invariably
get all upset when they see you on your alt at the summoning stone when you
decide to raid with one or the other, because that certainly isn’t why they
rolled their toon to 70… to play the game with it, lord no. To imagine that
someone can be interested in reading up on both constant Threat per Second
Generation and Effective Finisher Rotations for a combat mace specced rogue
would blow their mind. Throw in recommended pre-Kara healing leather gear and I
think I feel a head asplosion coming on.
But why
should a toon brought in for one encounter be entitled to roll on loots?! Um, because
without it, the raid would have been cancelled? Obviously if you have more DKP than the
person brought in for one encounter (as a human, not character) has earned,
then the situation solves itself when you outbid them. If it comes down to
rolling 100, then those that were present for the fight should all be equally
able to roll.
The fact stands that I tend to be a One Guild kind of guy. It just gets to be
too much when I have to log one toon out to log another one on to see if that
guild is raiding again tonight because the first one isn’t. It just seems
silly, and counter productive. Why lie and hide stuff from the very team you’re
supposed to be playing for? If anything, playing more than one class gives you
unique insight to all the classes combined, and how they can work together. It
teaches you how to play your ‘main’ better than if you just strapped on tunnel
vision Mage-Only specs.
Bleh… I’m bitter, I suppose. I guess we should be awarding those that only know
how to play one class much more than someone who tries to excel in more than
one area. Because people with PhDs in Economics and Physics are
obviously not as intelligent as one who focused only on a single subject,
AMIRITE? In reality, WoW is not a terribly complicated game, and comparing
‘reaching level 70’ with earning a PhD is pretty ridiculous, but the analogy
stands… would you not let a double major help with your taxes because all that
‘Physics stuff’ would just distract them, and only clutter their brain? When
confronted with a bi-lingual, do you ‘talk down’ to them, using simple strings
of words like “strange black and white horse”, instead of the precise word
Zebra? To me, a mage with a prot tank alt probably has a better grasp of how threat
works on both sides of the coin than someone who only played one or the other. A holy
paladin with a resto shaman alt is (hopefully) going to be an awesome healer,
and can swap in or out depending on which fights will make better use of his
talents as either.
I dream of a day when the guild I’m in actually makes use of
every toon I have at my disposal. Just the other day we couldn’t do Alar
because we didn’t have enough tanks on. I offered to step outside, log off my
rogue and come back on as my warrior, but they wanted to be able to do it “without resorting
to bringing an alt in”. Why is that “resorting” to anything? He’s a member of
the guild just as much as I am. In fact, he’s ME. I’m already in the fucking
raid. We actually went on to try it with fewer tanks, but the raid leader went on to say that the "upside was that
we had extra DPS".
Like, one too many rogues, and not enough tanks.
…
I think a paradigm shift is needed, and honestly I don’t see
anything changing until I make my own guild and call the shots. Remember when
people used to /roll 100 whenever they’d see chest? I was that guy that would just
walk over and open it. People would flip out, and I’d calmly explain that until
you knew what was in the chest, there was really no point in rolling
yet. What if the plate wearer won the chest, but the run's clothie could use one of
the greens inside?
Nobody "got it". It was perfectly sound logic, but it just
wasn’t the way things were done. Nobody was willing to admit it made sense, because every other group before then had just rolled. This is a common defense for racism. "Everyone else calls black people niggers, so I will too." Great mentality.
Until someone comes along and shakes the very foundation of the preconceived notion of how we handle alts, I’m stuck in guilds that don’t know how to react to me having three Seventies. At least the character transfer cooldown has been lowered to one month.
/sigh.
Windows Vista + Word XP + Copy + Paste = Shit Ragged Right Edge to the Text.
I surrender.
*edit: fixed
Kara is an alt playground.
If a guild is still taking it seriously, at this stage in the game, it might be time for the alt aficionado to take his caravan elsewhere.
On the other hand there ARE people who roll a new shitbag "main" every week. They never take the time or expend the focus to learn a class, but they will repeatedly dwindle your gbanks and hamper progressive fights if you let them.
Thats was your article?
Iso I have been reading your stuff for a while now....and, well I would rather hear more about japan.
DKP is mmo communities instituting minimum wage.
There is something very broken if this is "fun"
err... this is actually an old version of this article. i posted a rewrite of it, but this is the old one... I use kara as an example that everyone is familiar with. I'm currently trudging thru SSC / TK, and being forced to leave one toon on the shelf like it or not. The rewrite of the article mentions the Alar fight specficially, but it's maybe still coming down the pipe? dunno.
as for hearing more about japan, it's just america where you can't read street signs, and everyone is japanese. there's really not a big mystery to it. :( what do you want to know?
**edit: fixed... updated with "most recent" version of the text, but now apparently whole sentences are "hyperlinks" with word's track changes feature. i hate computers.
Hey Iso, big fan of your articles...been reading them for awhile now. ^_^ J/w if you could tell me anything about this Japanese candy.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/Cronoo/CandyFront.jpg
ty
heya, posting as Anonymous just to test something out (allowing anons to give pseudo usernames, without actually having to register), but i can't tell you much about that candy other than that the kana on it spell out "LEMON SODA".
i imagine it's just one of the 10 billion types of hard candy. every convenience store sells big bags of them, and they really aren't unique enough to actually put a name to. it's the kind of crap someone will buy on the way to work, and leave one on everyone's desk for after lunch or something. i stockpile crap like this in my drawer, then bring it all home one night to give to the wife before the semester ends... something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Lotte-Mixed-Soda-Japanese-Candy/dp/B000RDN8NQ
scroll down and you'll se a bunch more at the bottom of the page.
These comments look confusing in the new layout.
Anyway. At this stage in the game where every serious guild has had every instance on farm for a good while now it makes little to no difference. Any serious guild starting on new content however will always have a no alts in guild or no alts in raid policy.
The reason is simple. 25 well geared characters will get you through new content faster than 50 half geared characters. Once content reaches farm status some guilds seem more relaxed about it. As far as having seperate DKP per character this also makes sense. If you are a main tank, (thus you are one of the first warriors to get geared) you will accumulate massive DKP while others are still trying to catch up to you on gear. Is it really productive for the guild for you to turn around and outbid rogues on items for your alt? Or is it better for your "main dps" guys to get geared first?
*shrug* again it just matters how serious a guild is about burning through content. It will always be more efficient to gear out a core group of people first than have a bunch of half geared mains and some alts sporting some nifty gear here and there. If the guild is finding they need your alt a good deal they should probably just recruit another member of that class.
Thanks for the candy info Iso!
Oh, alts in SSC/TK? No, not if you are still learning the zone. But, it sounds like you are in a guild that isnt making you care enough to stick to a main and progress.
If this is , who are whoring one of your alts to progress, id probably insist on alt rolls. Try to get double Vashj vials and upgrade like everyone else.
But if you like your guild alot, and want to see it beyond Vashj/Kael, you probably need to pick 1 rock solid main and be happy. Take one for the team if an alt has to come in for alar, the loot will get downstream before long. 25 fully geared people, like the previous 'theorist' said.
um apparently Random Association of the Lewtz got hacked from my last reply, lol.
yeah, i see what you guys are saying about spreading loot too thin, but honestly, in my curent guild (and ones i've been in), we have stupid amounts of turnover where a rogue will join the guild, get a piece of tier gear and then quit. it would be better to have that on an alt of someone that intends to stay.
i still stand by the "DKP per human" thing. imagine you work an IT job where you split time between tech support and programming. then imagine that you earn a yearly bonus not on total time spent, but separately for each task. then come christmas, HR pulls you aside to say "OH, SORRY... looks like you only worked 32 hours a week all year long, and we only award bonuses to those who put in full 40 hour weeks."
"Um. Are you retarded? I was doing tech support when i wasn't programming."
"Yeahhhh, but that's not the same, and so you can't be awarded for 'total time contributed'. maybe next year."
Dead HR, film at eleven.
I can see where you're coming from Iso, guilds that are still struggling in low-level content really shouldn't complain that people using alts is gimping their progress ... there is obviously something else going on. However when you get up into more high-level stuff having people on alts just hurts everything, as there will always be one character that is better geared (and if not you're leeching from the entire guild) and not using that character gimps the raid. If you can't get a required setup for a raid and you have to use alts, again you have bigger problems then people using alts to raid. When your guild is well-geared even running easy instances with alts is painful, the dps difference from a blue and t4 dps than a full t6 one is just that big. My guild rarely allows people to use alts even on PuG kara badge runs, simply because who likes doing kara for 6 hours these days? Basically, guilds where people are not that well geared should use everything they can get, but if you ever move on to the endgame you'd be wrong to say this.
to me if your on dkp then as long as each alt or box toon earns their own dkp then they should be able to roll on a loot... if you have attended the raids on the toons and earned the points then you should not be a second class toon not able to roll until its going to rot.. its sad ive been in many guilds that are not alt/bot friendly but man when they need a certain class or lacking dps they sure want you to break out the alts and bots... heck i bot 4 toons now just so i can be my own group and not have to look forever for a group or when i need to stop for 30 mins to deal with my kids..
As a guild leader, I deal with issues of alts quite often. It really becomes a slippery slope quite fast.
The biggest problem is people's feelings of entitlement. If you let one alt go, the next alt wants to know why they can't. Sometimes people just fail to understand gear requirements. Here's an imaginary conversation:
Priest: I want to bring my healer to SSC
Me: Your healer isn't ready for SSC
Priest: But Isobelle gets to take his druid healer to SSC
Me: Isobelle has 1500 +heal, you only have 900
Preist: But everyone else is way overgeared for SSC. Besides, my gear is fine, I have full Hallowed set.
That to me is a main issue with alts - people thinking it is ok to be undergeared for the content so long as everyone else is overgeared. As in, I'm too good to spend time gearing up appropriately, just take me directly to the next level of content.
Another (true) good example is this mage alt the other day who repeatedly asked to go on ZA. With 500 +dam. I told him he needs to go run freaking Kara first. We want to get 3 chests, we're not taking some gimp mage in blues/greens to ZA. Still he asks to take his mage to ZA. It's really annoying.
And before you accuse me of extreme alt prejudice, I have 2 70's alts, one full Kara geared. But I don't try to take my Priest in blues to ZA, and I don't try to take my Kara resto shammy to BT (well if she were even keyed). I know my place - I have my main. My other chars are there IF needed, but they aren't my priority.
This is really just skimming the surface of the alt issue. I could have a lot more comments if I tried, I am sure :P
Also for the record I don't comprehend dkp belonging to the character, that's ridiculous imo. DKP belongs to the person, not the toon. I didn't even know that guilds did it the other way.
The DKP-per-person (rather than per-character) issue seems like a no-brainer to me. It *should* be per character, not per person.
I don't believe Iso's analogy is appropriate. A cash bonus is a reward for the employee, and has no affect on the performance of the company. Whereas a gear reward improves the performance of the raid, not just the character (if, and only if, that character is in the raid).
That last sentence is key. If you're a tank 99% of the time, but you bring your alt healer in now and then, the loot your alt healer gets does not have any effect on 99% of your raids. Whereas if a main healer had gotten that loot instead, then 99% of your raids would benefit from that loot. Offline loot does not help your raid.
Imagine you work an IT job where you split time between tech support and programming. Then imagine your management prioritizes equipment upgrades based on total hours worked. Imagine you worked 70 hours per week, but only 5 hours per week of that was programming. Bob, who is a full time programmer, only worked 60 hours per week, but 100% of it was programming. At the end the of year the manager buys a shiny new programming machine and gives it to you because you worked more hours than Bob, even though Bob spent way more time programming than you did. The outcome of this is:
* Your company sees a very tiny return on their investment, because you rarely do the task which benefits from this upgrade.
* Bob is pissed off because the tech support guy has a better programming machine than he does.
My guild actually has a solution for this. If the raid leader asks you to bring in an alt (say, the raid is short healers, and you have a healer alt), then that alt is entitled to loot just like anyone else. But if you're just bringing in your alt because you want to (assuming the raid leader even lets you do that), then mains get loot priority over your alt. In practice, this rarely comes up, because nobody has alts that are sufficiently geared to perform well in our main raids. A green/blue gear wearing character (heck, even a reasonably well geared Kara raider) has no place standing in front of Illidan, period.
Look, the whole point of end-game raiding it to experience the content (right?) By giving gear upgrades to those *characteers* who are in the raid most, you make your raid stronger, which eventually allows you to experience (read: kick the ass of) even harder content.
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