(Short holiday post to keep things ticking over.)
Stargrace wrote over the weekend about her alts in EQ2, and she notes that she spends quite a lot of time deciding “what to do and who to do it on.”
And I thought this was a good question for anyone else who runs active multiple alts in a game. When you log into a game, how do YOU decide which alt to play and what to do? Do you have a regular daily/ weekly schedule for each alt? Start with your main and then switch to alts if you run out of things to do? Does it depend on your mood?
Or are you more of a completist who has to run dailies on every one of your available alts for you to feel satisfied?
Welcome to Spinksville! 
If I’m alting in a MMO, it’s almost always because my main is on the way to retirement. Usually that means I only log into my main for raids/requests from guild/personal challenges, like soloing a dungeon.
The rest of the time, my alt gets leveled/geared up.
I just look at the character log in screen and pick according to mood.. if I have a lot of time I might pick a higher level and do some instancing, if I’m short on time or am going to be interrupted a lot I pick something low level.. If I’m pissed off I’ll pick something I like to pvp with, if I just want to bimble about the countryside or chat with friends, I’ll pick something that’s near an inn, or pick flowers, or craft..
I’ve been alting in Eve recently and I make this decision by task.
– check there’s a skill in training. Do this for each account.
– check long term semi-passive income generators are running. Log on to alts that need these activities restarted and shoot stuff.
– set up semi-afk passive gameplay on second computer.
– log onto main, shoot people.
I makes the alts play “guess what Ratters done got in his pocket.” Winner gets ta go quest.
I run an army of alts that are all into making gold in WoW. I tend to log into at least 4-5 of them daily (my main and another 3-4 gold making crafters) and when I have extra time after finsihing my daily quests on my main character. The choice of which of my Ideal Alts to play is determined by what I am still working on for my army of alts. Could be leveling one of the stragglers or grinding rep for a recipe, but every move is a piece in the gold making puzzle.
My character selection screen is filled on my main server. I’ve got my main (85 hunter), DK (85), Paladin (85), Priest (81), Mage (80), Druid (62), Warlock (14), another Priest (Undead, which I play along side my youngest son), Rogue and Warrior.
On another server I have a Goblin Shaman (24) which I play along side my other side when he has the urge to play.
On yet another server, I have a Troll Druid which I play, mostly solo without any male.. er.. BoA enhancement items.
How do I pick which one I want to play? Eeny, meeny, mieny, moe.
It depends on mood. I’ve pretty much sat the Mage and Priest. The other Priest and Shaman I play when the boys want to play. The really low level alts sit around wearing nearly full kit of BoA gear and I’ll get to them eventually. When I’m on my own, I muck around with the Troll Druid. He’s on a PVP server so I’m looking forward to stirring up trouble – this is my main focus outside of raiding, grinding Valor point capping (raiding helps this) and Firelands dailies.
Definitely goes by mood in all games though in Wurm Online my alt is used simultaneously (dual boxing) for all those boring chores (mining, farming, grooming) that my main may not have time for. Except fishing…there’s always time for fishing and its more fun with my main and my alt both on the boat fishing away 🙂
– no real schedule of who to play; just whichever one is most fun to play with at the moment
– i try to leave my main as my completionist, while my alts are regulated to certain tasks: playing only with the gf, or only without the gf, only pvp, only pve, but usually it ends up I can’t stick with only doing one thing
I used to be a terrible altoholic in WoW but for all the wrong reasons. I finally took a hard look at it and realized I had really done everything I wanted to do and should have quit long ago.
Now, I only play one main per game and if I don’t want to play that then I really didn’t want to play that game. I was just going through the motions out of habit. I like to think I learned my lesson not to try too hard to have fun with my hobby and let it come naturally.
I now have a lot more free time to try other games and read more now that I don’t have to have multiple characters doing the same dailies. Especially when I don’t really like daily quests that much.
It of course helps when a game like Rift comes along and my character can be so versatile within my preferred archetype.
No specific schedule or plan, will just pick one which feels fun to play. If another character than the one I picked is more suitable for some activity in-game friends are doing, then I will happily switch in general.
I am not a completionist, so if I end up doing some task or accomplishment on one character that may often be good enough. There is no single character that I try to do everything with or generally no accomplishment that I must do on every character.
I usually focus on one character until I get tired of playing them, then switch. I’ve tried to do the every-alt every-daily thing and it led to a long break from WoW. With my new 10 x 85 thing (getting an 85 of each class) , I’m planning on utilizing the rested bonuses as much as possible (while still leveling, of course), so I’ll probably be playing the character’s who I’ve played the least in a rotation… which really is not that different from how I handle my level 85 alts, now that I think about it.
Nice thought-provoking question!
I switch characters when I run into grindy patches, whether those are based on a lot of questing in one area or a slow patch in the leveling curve (meaning little to no change in *how* a character plays). The time away with another character keeps the monotony from killing my interest in the game.
…it’s a very similar thing when looking at which game to play, actually. I just can’t play one game exclusively. I play a bunch of games at any one time, and switch between them for much the same reasons.