Alt-Bouncing, Spending Quality Time with Devv

Lately, when I play WoW, my time is spent bouncing between alts for various reasons. I have six toons who see regular action, another who sees occasional playing time, and an AH/bank mule. Five of the active toons are in my main’s guild. My fellow guildies make fun of me and say that I have multiple personality disorder.

Dantei, a level 215 Engineer, makes Crafted Heavy Shot for Kaddisfly. Ellyza disenchants low level greens, enchants my lowbie toons’ gear, then sells the excess mats at AH. Raulduke makes some rings and necklaces for my lowbies, but he’s about to give up Jewelcrafting for Skinning. Paired with Mining, he’ll be my workhorse out in the field, gathering mats for his brothers and sisters. Kaddisfly… well, he pretty much just takes without giving anything back. He needs his ammo from Dantei, his Rumsey’s Black Label Rum from his sugar momma, Devv, and his pots from his guildie, Airdrie. The only thing he does do for himself is fishing to feed Pignewton. Aside from that, his job is to pwn in BG’s, gathering marks and honor in anticipation of a possible ascension to level 29 to rule the 20-29 bracket.

When I am logged into my two accounts (Ellyza and Raulduke are a separate account), I bounce back and forth between five toons, sending each other mats and gold. If I did things intelligently, I would just create a guild for my alts and pool all of the mats and gold. But I really enjoy participating in guild chat while I’m crafting goodies and browsing the AH. Most of the time, the gang is all in IF, gaining mad quantities of rested XP. The upside is that when I do level them, I fly through each level. The downside is that they rarely get out of IF as I routinely need their skills and access to their respective bank tabs. But the biggest downside is that my main, Devv, has been kind of overlooked. She’s been stuck at level 62 for a couple weeks now. Her open quests are all in Zangarmarsh, but she hasn’t ventured farther than Brewfest from IF in a while. That is, until today.

Depending mostly on teleportation as a mode of transportation lately, I finally busted out the hearthstone and shot myself back into the thick of things. Zangarmarsh and the promise of gold and better gear became irresistable sometime before work this morning. I killed some Mire Hydras, collected some soil samples, turned in Unidentified Plant Parts for Cenarion Expedition rep, and got back to what I love about WoW: being a mage. Devv is about 90% through level 62 and I have every intention of dinging 63 tonight. After that, she’ll probably go back to camping out in IF for a while. I just can’t see leveling her right before a patch drops that reduces the XP required to level from 60 to 70. I know it’s probably laziness and a total noob move, but I’m not wasting any more time than necessary to get to 70. The quests are fun and all, but I’m more interested in PvP than end-game raiding.

Speaking of PvP, Kaddisfly will be entering WSG as a fully twinked level 19 for the first time tonight. Well, he’s not quite fully twinked. He stills needs Enchant 2H Weapon Agility on his Twisted Chanter’s Staff. And he needs the stamina enchant re-applied to his new bracers, but aside from that, he’s done. And working his way to 19 made me realize something. I want to level a Hunter. Yeah, yeah… I know. But they seem like a hell of a lot of fun. Screw it! I’m doing it!

A Little History

If you’ve discovered this site and you’re not me, I’m doing something right. And if that’s the case, I should probably give you a little something to chew on. As of this posting, I am a 33-year-old husband, father, and retail manager. I’m also a hopeless World of Warcraft addict. But this is a recent development. Read on, my friends.

The juggernaut MMORPG know as World of Warcraft has been making waves since 2004. For the better part of the four years since the game’s release, I’ve been a huge skeptic of an IP with 10 million people willingly ponying up fifteen snaps a month to wander around fantasyland. So, in early July, when one of the ever-growing population of my WoW-playing co-workers started pressuring me to play a ten day trial account, I balked at the idea. Persistent, he absolutely guaranteed me that I would be addicted within ten days. At this point, he had laid down the gauntlet. I took the trial code not out of interest but rather, to prove him wrong. At first, I stuck to my guns. I created a Troll Mage, leveled him to 5, then realized that all of my friends and co-workers on the realm were Alliance. Mother of Pearl!

After a little bit of tinkering, I decided that I wanted to be a Draenei. Of course, that meant buying the game and the expansion. As luck would have it, I had a gift card for Best Buy. What the hell, I figured. If it’s as good as everybody says, then at least I’ll have the character that I really want. If I wind up hating the game, I’m not out any “real” money. And thus, Devv, my Draenei Mage, was born. From 0-10, I wasn’t really impressed. It was repetitive, boring nonsense and I couldn’t really do any cool stuff. At level 10, I had a co-worker come get me and lead me from Exodar to Ironforge… on foot. He showed me the areas to level from 11-20, set me up at the Inn in IF, gave me 5G, then turned me loose. Somewhere between 10 and 15, my initial ten day trial expired. The addiction was starting to set in.

By the time I dinged 20, I was falling in love with the mechanics of the game. I had discovered curse.com and installed some very helpful add-ons. I might have even gone overboard at first. Aside from the aesthetics of the game, I was really starting to enjoy what a mage brought to the table. I had just learned Blink and spent about an hour Blinking into, out of, over, and past things. At the time, it was a party trick. I really didn’t “get” the game yet. I also got the gift of Teleportation. No more schlepping around on smelly boats and Hippogryphs. I joined a guild that was widely regarded as the “minor leagues” for one of the most respected guilds on the server. The members weren’t very active and those that were liked to solo. I was having fun, but I knew that there had to be more to the game.

Somewhere around level 25, the patch dropped that made mounts available at level 30. While everyone whined and moaned on Trade Chat, I silently celebrated. I really wasn’t looking forward to the grind from 25 to 40. Sometime in my early 30’s, my bank account showed over 1000G. My tailoring and mining had paid off. At 40, I started selling ports to further supplement my income. I was a gold machine! And then, Blizzard announced the Zhevra mount for Refer-A-Friend. I needed to get my hands on one of these bad boys. On a whim, I hopped in the car, ran down to Best Buy, and bought another copy of the WoW Battlechest and a 60 day game card. I came home, installed the monstrosity on my laptop, went through the necessary steps to link the accounts, and collected my Zhevra mount. I sat back with a grin on my face, admiring the icon that would become an actual mount at level 60. The smile faded as the realization set in. I was completely… and totally… addicted.

Nowadays, Devv is at level 62. I’m confident that I could have had her to 70 by now if I really wanted. But with the pre-WotLK patch coming, the XP needed to get from 60 to 70 is supposed to drop significantly. I can’t see grinding it out now when it’ll be so much easier in a month or so. Yes, I understand that statement probably makes me a noob, but guess what. I am a noob. I’ve been playing slightly less than three months. I think, by definition, a noob is exactly what I am. I’m OK with that. But I did pretty good for a noob. by the time I dinged 60, I was sitting on over 2000G. As of this writing, I’m down to just over 500G. Why? As it turns out, I’m a bit of an altaholic.

I have a level 20 Gnome Rogue named Dantei who has been camped out in IF for two months and changes professions based on the needs of my otheralts. He’s leveled five professions to 225 only to dump his skills when somebody needs something. I have a level 14 Draenei Priest named Ellyza and a level 14 Draenei Shaman named Raulduke. My fury with the Alliance’s inability to everwin BG’s in the 50-59 bracket prompted the creation of a Blood Elf Mage. Imbroglio was rolled specifically to be leveled to 59 and rack up honor and marks when the Allies just aren’t getting it done. He’s currently at level 21. Deciding to roll an eventual twink peaked my interest in the twinking process. Sitting on all that gold, I decided that I wasn’t patient enough to level a toon to 59 before I could own in BG’s. I needed that experience right now!

This is the part of the story where my bank account goes from 2000G to just over 500G. I wanted to get Devv’s tailoring to 375 before she dinged 70, so I bought an awful lot of Netherweave Cloth and Arcane Dust to facilitate this. That and my epic mount knocked me down quite a bit. But the meat and potatoes of the red ink belong to a long-haired hunter freak named Kaddisfly. He alone will be the subject of my first “official” post. Stay tuned, friends!