Greedy Goblin

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Thinking about alts

At first I'd like to emphasize that my opinion about alts has not changed: they are useless e-peening tools, allowing the player to feel "progressing" again, despite he is not getting any higher, just repeating the same content and gets stuck where the main is stuck. Real progression would be unstucking the main. It also allows the player to get more shinies than one character can hold for technical reasons ("I have all together 500 mounts lol"). The last "purpose" of the alt is to let the player waste more time after he have done everything with his main while hanging out with "friends" instead of simply cutting back on WoW time.

There are exceptional situations where alts are useful to bypass game limitations, like getting the worgen rogue part of the stay classy achievement, or the infamous saronite slaving, but these can be performed by temporary achievement alts who are removed from the guild after completion or with an unguilded alt (who can be in some lolguild for perks with /g off). The same applies if you wonder if another class would suit you better: you can level it in a lolguild with /g off and if made your choice, leave with your retired main and get an invite with the new.

However here is the problem: more and more people want to bring alts to raids and when a raid is canceled due to low healer attendance someone always say "if I could bring my healer we could raid". When I reply "leave with this char and I inv that one", they go silent.

Again: I don't think that they have anything but social reasons to not have alts. I don't think that they are right. I don't think that if they wouldn't be as a-social as the guild ethos these problems would exist. I guess the reason for their silence after "leave with this char and I inv a new one" is not wanting to lose the effort they spent on leveling and gearing their old main. If it could stay in the guild, it would upkeep the false hope of it is being current, being in the game. No, as the healer-demand is permanent, so your DD alt would most probably never get spot. But a "maybe someday" is much better for a social than an official "never".

So here I have the traditional "watering-down" dilemma. How far can I withdraw from the "perfect" form of an idea to make it acceptable to non-hardcore followers of the mentioned idea, without losing the idea itself. The no-alt rule is one of the most important a-social rules. Giving it up would be a theoretical setback and a reason for fear among the members: will the "watering-down" ends? Will arthasdklol accepted a year from now? Will "lol" be common in the guildchat? Gevlon promises never, but he said the same about alts!

I'm seriously interested about your opinion. Shall we allow an alt in to reach out for more social people, those who are ready to live by the "no lol, no gz, no helping" rules, but not by the "you can't have the fuzzy feeling of progressing without actually progressing", or the hell with them and we rather raid only when enough healers are online?

Please note that we can't have both. Very few will abandon his geared main to roll a new healer and the lack of healers seems to be a permanent issue. While they have no other guild to go (all guilds are having this problem), we can't raid either. Our raiding activity suffers from it and without raiding, there is no guild. On the other hand maybe "roflcoh" is a great priest, maybe we should give him a chance. (Never!)

Please also note that getting a genie back to the bottle is harder than keeping him inside. Once we allow alts, cleaning them up will be harder after the raiding stabilizes. Most probably we can only get rid of them when the guild size reaches 1000 and we can no longer invite new members without kicking alts.


The discussion is open to everyone, not just guild members, but it's not about alts in general. Don't try to convince me that they are good. The question is: "allow members this slack from the a-social ideas for better raiding results or make our stand here even if it raiding suffers from it?"

83 comments:

Imraith Dos Santos said...

So you have this rule. You have what you are convinced are valid and important reasons for making this rule. You have established your guild based upon this rule and upon other rules like it. The rules, then, are the foundation of the guild. If the rules fall, the guild follows.

Yaggle said...

First I would look into solving the problem with any paladins/druids/shaman/shadowpriest that could add a healilng offspec. Maybe you just need to pay them for incentive.

Bumpy said...

I think having utility alts is not a bad idea, as long as they don't abandon their main. What you could do is grant it on a trial, and as long as both are active (alternate raids, raid once a week, etc), then they can stay, else the less-used one gets kicked (say after one month no raids).

The argument against of course is that your effectiveness at playing either class goes down as you are no longer focusing on a single class, countered by the "this class is boring/taxing, let me try something else".

Anonymous said...

EVERY SINGLE person that I know, has an alt to experience a different playstyle, whether it be our main tank playing as a ranged DPS, or a healer playing a tank. I am in a 10/13H guild, so it's not a matter of "progress more on your main" as very soon we will have everything cleared. Every one of us in the guild just loves to raid, what do you do when we have killed everything? Raid on an alt! In answer to your problem, I can guarantee that we would be nowhere near 10/13 if it weren't for our alts. While I approve of most of your other rules, the alt rule, and the reason for it are so far out there it's not even funny.

Twinstar said...

I think it's OK. There have been times when I asked to heal a certain raid just for a change of pace. It also gave me a different perspective of the fights which I think helps me be a better player. I had no intentions of changing mains, leadership knew that.

We had a rule that no alts were allowed to current tier raids without GM approval. If it wasn't needed to make the raid (as is your case) the answer was always NO. No bringing alts just because your main already has gear from this wing or that boss. Very few people ever requested it after the first couple of weeks.

However, the good players had several alts and understood the whole gmae from tank, melee, ranged and healing perspectives. They were able to adapt to situations better because they had seen things from all angles. These players were the ones asked if a need arose and they were nearly always willing to help the raid.

Leeho said...

I've played quite a lot of classes to see what playstyle i like the most, and by this moment i'm pretty sure that i want to dps as warlock and heal as resto druid. No, i don't want to level a priest that could do both roles but slightly less interesting for me, it's just not the same. No, shaman and paladin or dpsing as moonkin is not the option too. So i play them both, warlock as main, druid as alt. And yes, i have exact reasons why i don't want those options to combine both roles in one character.

After three months of concentrating at my main due to the thing that raid progress required more than raids themself, i realized that i miss healing really much. So now when i can just raid with lock, i have some spare time to heal. Not to "progress with some other char instead of unstucking your main", not to go and grind something for second char, but to simply jump and heal, heal and jump (yes, it's the core reason why i love so much to heal as druid). Eventually druid will be geared enough to raid so it could be a replacement to save the moment sometimes, but i'm not pushing it.

How can you even "unstuck", if you raid with main and progresssing, not being stack at all in the first place?

How is that all about epeen, if you like to play more than one role and there's no class in game that could do them both the way you like them?

Unknown said...

If someone has enough of a head on their shoulders to follow the rules on one character, there is no reason they will not be followed while logged on to another. Your worry about relaxing the no alts rule in the guild seems to be that it would attract more social types to join....but obviously you ALREADY have them in guild if they are offering to bring alts to raid. Ultimately, I do not believe it would affect the asocial integrity you strive to uphold.

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that you note you always have a healer shortage. From a top-guild perspective, I've seen healers and tanks raiding in dps specs or on dps alts for numerous major boss kills. Different bosses and instances are easier with different composition, and this is the flexibility alts allow.

Often, a few weeks later with more practice on the boss in question, we can afford to lose dps, or our membership roster has changed, and the alt is no longer needed.

Alternatively, if you didn't want alts in the guild itself, you could allow them to raid without being guilded on said alt?

Carson 63000 said...

A problem with your "no alts" policy is that it basically makes anyone playing a druid or paladin a first-class citizen, anyone playing a warrior, DK, priest or shaman a second-class citizen, and anyone playing a rogue, mage, warlock or hunter into a third-class citizen.

If you have two players who aspire to be excellent at both tanking and healing; one of them playing a druid, and the other with level 85 warrior and priest, what are you intending to achieve by blessing the druid, whilst telling the second player than he can only guild his warrior OR his priest, not both?

Learning to tank and heal well on a druid isn't really any easier than learning to tank well on a warrior and heal well on a priest.

Gearing a druid to both tank and heal well isn't really any easier than gearing a warrior to tank well and a priest to heal well.

What's your goal here? I understand the goal behind not wanting the guild overflowing with lowbie alts, half of them long abandoned.

Squishalot said...

There are a few flaws with your current thought process. There are more asocial reasons than just "my DD-alt won't gear up".

1. Their DD character is their preferred character - that's why they're in your guild. They want to run heroics and raids as DD. If they come as a healer, it will only be 'for the good of the guild', possibly for some guaranteed fee from the pot (similar to veteran's fee).

2. Guild hopping back and forth, unless you /ginv and /gquit, results in wasted guild reputation, if you leave it for more than a week. It means that the player (and an officer or yourself) has to go through the hassle of re-inviting both characters to maintain their Honoured / Revered / Exalted reputation ranking.

3. The healer shortage is in raiding, where you're looking for a 2/5/3 tank/DD/healer ratio. For heroics, you generally look for a 1/3/1 healer ratio, meaning that there isn't a shortage for such running heroics (if you only need one DD to switch to heals to raid). So the DD who has a healing alt may not want to give up guild heroic running on his preferred character for the sake of raiding on his alt.

One way of getting around the social problems of alts (as well as dealing with the issue of having useless alts in the guild in the first place) is to adjust the 'inactivity' clause. Rather than set it as 'not logged in for 1 month', use the new 'weekly guild contribution' measures to determine if a character is active or not. If an alt is inactive (not 0 activity, but minimal, some arbitrary number) for a period of time, then they can be kicked.

Having said that, the real question is whether you *want* to give slack to the rules. As you say, where do you draw the line? At what point are you removing yourself from the core purpose for the guild?

It's your guild, it's your decision to make. A side interesting question would be whether any such breach of the original rules (and the no-alt rule is one of the original rules, dating back to the Ganking project) would constitute 'abandoning' the guild project, and thus result in the 2000g penalty that you suggested you would pay.

Anonymous said...

Why does the alt have replace the main in the guild to join the raid? The fact that it belongs to a guild member and pays the same fees and fines as the rest of the raid team should be good enough - provided of course there isn't a guild character that could fill the same spot.

Sum said...

I can give you one reason why a raiding alt is a good thing: the experience from performing a different role on a raid makes you better also on your main.

My main is a rdps, and leveling and raiding on my healer alt made me realise how much avoidable AoE ranged dps are taking just by standing too close to the boss/mobs. Or how important using defensive cooldowns can be. Of course I knew these things before in theory, but seeing them in practise made me more careful to not be that careless dps focused on nothing but topping charts.

I also do the raid leading in my guild, and although I hate tanking, I leveled and did some raid tanking on alt just so I could see what the problems and tricks of that job are. I can say with certainty that having done raiding in all three roles has made a much, much better raid leader. I wish I could try raiding on every class (and spec) in the game, but that would take insane amounts of time and work...

In our guild we encourage people to have an alt, arrange alt raids and allow alts on farm raids when the mains no longer need loot - because it makes people better players and makes raiding seem new again. The latter point is also very important when thinking of the long time between raid patches and keeping guildies motivated - some lightweight alt raiding can be a lot of fun. Fun raids, happy guildies, stable raiding cores.

And lastly of course, having geared alts in a guild is a very valuable asset, if you have it available. The raid composition requirements on 10 man (especially HM) are borderline ridiculous for some bosses, and we couldn't meet them without using some alts every now and then.

Also consider that if you are hoping someone might switch mains to a healer, that this would be more likely to happen if they could try raid healing on their alts freely. Perhaps some would find out they quite enjoy it.

zenga said...

Your reasoning in your initial 'no alt post' to weed out e-peening made sense. However I believe that this is no longer true with the current state of the game:

a) gearscore was one of the main e-peen reasons; yet on my realm I still have to meet the first player who mentions gearscore since the launch of Cataclysm
b) Blizzard has replaced gearscore with the itemlevel. They've done it in such a way that itemlevel is related to the content that you can run rather than how shiny your gear is.
c) The shared raid lock out and shared loot system between 10m and 25m modes: there is no longer a difference in gearlevel from raiding normal content, everyone is the same.
d) the real bad m&s can never obtain purples, except the ones that every has from reputation. No one will carry them through raids, no one needs boddies to fill the raid. Nor do they make enough gold to buy BoE epics.

The danger of e-peening m&s seems to be gone, judging by what I see on my realm.

Myself I raid in a 25m guild that takes on heroic content as elemental shaman. However if I was unable to bring in alts into the guild to benefit from some of the perks (honor bonus for example), then I believe I'd obtain for another guild. It makes the grind that one has done before a little bit less ... boring.

Currently my paladin tank is not in any decent shape, but shortly we will start alt runs, and the only reason is to progress in a different role. I don't see how progressing with my elemental shaman would hinder progressing as a tank on the paladin. Getting gear on him or being able to fill in holes isn't even the idea behind it. I simply consider both aspects of the game I enjoy.

Off-speccing my shaman as melee or healer is beyond my interest; as it's not something I enjoy.

For me an alt is basically no different than an off spec.

nightgerbil said...

My alts are for two reasons only: The first reason (and the reason why I have to have them) is they give me access to the other professions in the game.

The second reason is I am trying to level every class to 85 within the game so that I can learn how to fight them. This is being extremely useful, I no longer struggle versus warlocks or ferals the way I once did in pvp and I can discuss/judge enhancement shaman and holadins in raid enviroments/arenas.

It would be extremely useful to have them within the pug, but I dont need it. I found a decent social guild to park my alts in, they are fairly high level with the perks a leveling alt needs and sometimes people to quest/lfg with.

My opinion for what its worth is this is your project. Make your rules, change your rules as you think best, but dont do something that doesnt feel right to you.

Anonymous said...

What hinders me from getting my alt into your guild, by not telling anyone it is my alt?
I could even use stunts such as, "yeah my girlfriend plays too, but we only have one gaming pc, so we cant be online at the same time", if it was really needed.

Anonymous said...

If you do decide to allow alts in order to encourage raid, you could simple restrict invites to ones that are raid-ready (ie; your alt can have an invite if it is level 85 and in proper gear).

Also you could restrict it to classes and specs that compliment the player's main. (ie; if their main is a DD, then their alt would have to have a healer or tank set-up to get an invite.)

This would limit the number of alts to useful characters who could benefit the guild.

Gevlon said...

@Yaggle: they already have it (as it gives them sure spot). It's the hunter and mage horde that is the problem (usually for a 10-man raid 5-8 mage+hunter want to come)

@Nightgerbil: I agree with you but typing "raid canceled" is something I really don't like.

@Anonymous: the /guildinfo command shows accounts and characters. If I inv a char, both shall increase by one. If only character count increases, I know it's an alt and you are kicked.

@Hannah: the purpose of the guild is proving the a-social ideas effectivity. True, the guild will be a-social even with alts. But it's still a step in the wrong way.

@Carson: leveling and gearing 2 chars is much more time than one with 2 specs. I'm afraid of instead of having a great warrior tank, I'll have an almost raid ready priest and warrior.

@Squishalot:

1: If they want to play a DD then do, with all its consequences (there is competition for DD spots, raids canceled). They shall make a choice (that they don't want for social reasons): do I prefer raiding as a mage 4 bosses/week or healing 9.

2: After they made up their mind there is no more hopping.

3: what's the point of doing heroics if you can't raid?

The inactivity rule is really genius and probably will be implemented.

The question is indeed: would it be abandoning the project or would it be just a slack to allow people who are near (but not at) our original aims to join/stay.

chewy said...

It doesn't have to be a binary decision.

If a player wants to invite an alt then they have to make the case for why the alt will bring value to the guild. Ask one of your members to write an addon that allows you to record the alt name and checks the activity of the alt (as Squish suggests).

Below a predetermined amount it removes them from the guild. Run the addon once a day to clean up alts that didn't live up to the value they promised.

You could refine this by publishing which alt classes would be eligible at any given time. Manage the extent to which the toothpaste comes out of the tube rather than trying to get some back in.

Leeho said...

@Gevlon

Canceled raids is not their consequences, it's yours. Player can always find a guild where mage is needed, same for any class. He doesn't have to choose class he doesn't like to have a spot. Even more, choosing a class for it's utility is a dead end, sooner or later you will abandon it. Just because it's a pure social reason to play some class to "benefit current guild" instead of simply finding a guild that needs the class you want. Yes, you might need to sacrifice something, for example, keep attendance. But why keeping attendance is worse for player than playing some class he doesn't like just to have a spot?

As for issue of gearing two characters instead of one - it's simply not true. After a quite short period of time there's only one source of improving your main's gear - raid on him, and raiding is limited per week. Anyways, you can always restrict people on bringing alts only after this point is passed.

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: I do (did) heroics knowing that I don't have time to raid. You could extrapolate your thought - why level to 85 if you don't do heroics, since you're not raiding? Why level to 70, if you're not going to level to 85? Why play the game at all if you're not ... going to raid? People simply have different priorities.

My personal view is that it wouldn't constitute abandonment providing that you manage alt-membership conscientiously. But, as you say, it is a step in the wrong direction. There are far more fundamental rules that contribute to the asocial goals of the PuG. Having said that, bending on any more rules would probably be 'too much'.

One note with the inactivity rule - because the guild tab only contains week-to-date or total information, you will need to use an addon of some sort to extract the activity (total) for all members in the guild, in order to compare to the activity (total) X weeks ago.

"I agree with you but typing "raid canceled" is something I really don't like."

As I understand, if you didn't have enough people to go raiding, the intent was to do lower tier / old school raids with reduced numbers of people. You can definitely two-heal or two+off heal most lower tier content by now. Did things like that ever go ahead?

Anonymous said...

You seem to have found the weakness associated with a "mains only guild." Now the question is, do you think you can better meet your goals (or better min/max weaknesses and strengths) by altering your approach? I would say yes. Assuming your goals to raid efficiently are more important to you than creating a comfortable environment.

By expanding your "no alts" rule, I'm sure you can create a more efficient environment that will meet more of your goals. I would say allow alts, create an alt rank and remove gchat privileges from them. That way they can see if there happens to be a need for them in the raid (DC, emergency, kick, whatever) and you won't be left looking for a healer when one is available, albeit on a different character.

Also, create a rule that says alts can't join your raid unless there is a need for it at the time. That way people can't ask if they can raid on their alt; you have to ask them to do.

I could be crazy, but I think no-alts ideal isn't perfect and you can improve your efficiency by changing your approach. By your own words, The Pug is something of an experiment and you are learning the strengths and weaknesses of this new approach to playing this game.

Jumina said...

I think its a good idea to have alts but its a bad idea to bring them into the main raid. Raiding guilds usually do not allow alts in their main raids and your rule serves the same purpose.

Alts in a raid prefer farm content. Its a good way to obtain nice gear for the alt but contribution from an alt is always lower than the one from a main.

However, you can use your alts for farming. Crafting professions give better boost and we do not have farming profession on mains. And its also fun to play different role in raid sometimes. But for this purpose there are alt runs.

Andru said...

The goal of the PuG was, as I understood, to prove that raiding can function in the absence of constraining 'social' rulesets.

NOT that raiding can function in the presence of equally-constraining 'asocial' rulesets.

If you're damaging your ability to raid because you *have* to obey arbitrary asocial rules, then you lost track of your own project.

Raiding should happen regardless of whether you have social, asocial rulesets, or even a completele lack of rules refering to social acts. That's what you need to prove.

PS: Blogger ate my longer post. Oh well.

Grim said...

A huge post and a flood of comments and everyone except one little Anon miss the part where the character doesn't have to be in the guild to raid.

Anyway, progress is not absolute. You can progress on an alt or another spec even if you have done everything on your main. E.g. if you have tanked/healed through everything, then learning to do 15k dps on your alt is progress. The mechanics of each fight are different for various roles. Even switching from MT to OT or ranged to melee can require some progressing (defined as learning something new about the encounter).

Also, PvP. It is unrelated to PvE enough that gearing an alt for it is exactly as long as gearing the main (provided alt is lvl85, which really doesn't take that much time).

And finally - if someone just bloody well wants to play 5 chars, that does NOT make him any more social. He might just feel like it. Its a game - people want to play it the way they like. If they play it good enough to help your raid, why accuse them of peacocking just because they have 5 chars? He might not even tell anyone about them until you can't raid because you won't let him come on his unguilded healer.

With enough money it is possible to gear a freshly dinged char for raids in one day. Just buy all the crafted epics, valor boots, run some heroics for whatever drops and one or two justice point items and you are up to avg ilvl 346 or so, which is enough to kill any normal mode. It gets easier as an expansion goes on because 1 tier increment in gear is less than one expansion and the "current minus 1" tier is easily attained.

Dàchéng said...

Gevlon, you asked "what's the point of doing heroics if you can't raid?"

To extend Squishalot's point in the other direction, what's the point of doing raids if you can't ... well, what? What is the point of doing raids? If it is a fun activity in itself, then surely you must allow that doing heroics can be a fun activity in itself?

Gevlon said...

@Grim: "feel like it" is social per definition.

@Dacheng: of course some people might find heroics "fun". Others find anal spamming fun. I just don't wish to be around them.

Anonymous said...

Your no alt rule seems to hinge on the assumption that the only reason for alts is e-peening.

If there's a "legitimate" reason for an alt then it's not just for e-peening.

If you're at all contemplating revoking the no-alt rule then you are contemplating the existence of "legit" alts (there is no "legit" reason for dkarthasdk)

Alts allow people to experience different aspects of the game which will make them a better player on their main; a tank with an experienced healer alt will be a better tank than one without. A DD with a tank alt knows why he shouldn't open with a trinketed pyro-blast before the tank is in position etc, etc, and just because it takes time and effort to gear up 2 chars doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who will invest that much time and effort.

skeddar said...

First of all it should be clear, that only alts which are already 85 and ready for raids (geared, gemmed, enchanted) should be allowed, if at all.
Secondly, it only makes sense, if the alt is of different role, meaning that no player should have 2 DDs in the guild etc.
The raid leader decides what the best setup of classes would be and picks the best match to his plan from the player's classes who are currently online.

As I'm still without a level 85 character, I'm a new player and like to experience a little of the game. While leveling my main I didn't even visit more than half of the regions.
Thus, I like having an alt, but I don't need him to be in the guild for leveling. Well, for leveling he doesn't need to be in a guild at all (I know, 5% exp etc. but without it's still fast enough).

Riptor said...

I think you should allow alts in your Guild for the sake of raiding. It can be beneficial if Players can swap classes for certain encounters.

But you should not treat them as Alts when they are in the Guild but as if they were Mains.

- Alts are only invited if they have the same lvl as the Players current Main.
- The requirements for appearance, speccing, etc stay the same as for the Main.
- The Alt has to be played at the average Level of the Guilds Raiding Mains

That way an Alt is not only a booster for Social Status but it is also a bit more serious Commitment. The Alt has to already been pushed to 85 and if it is used for a Raid must be enchanted/glyphed/specced/socketed as if it were a Main (i.e. has to meet the standard requirements of the PUG).

Also the most important part is the Skill level. If you are short on healers and someone logs to his Alt (alternatively you can check the Guild, see who has a Healer Alt and tell them to relogg) he is not treated as the Alt of Player XY, but as a Healer. Knowledge of the Boss Encounter, the Healers specific Role and Gameplay that is equivalent to that of the other Heals can be demanded.
If you apply those Rules you take most of the Social Aspects out of having an Alt and make it a Commitment; the basic Message being that the Player is committed to his second Toon.

Grim said...

@Grim: "feel like it" is social per definition.

Err... no?

Social by any definition (there are quite a few) has something to do with society. If one plays multiple characters without giving a hoot about what others think, that is the exact opposite of social.

"Feel like it" is any personal preference. People play WoW because they feel like it. I ate cereal for breakfast, because I felt like it. I play the class I play because I feel like it.
Is that social somehow?
How is someone deciding to play 5 classes different?

Anonymous said...

Your alt rule was formed to prevent M&S players (not toons) from joining the guild. After the many months your guild has been up, you and the inviters have become quite proficient at recognizing and avoiding them. You've learned. You can adapt the alt rule without compromising the mission of the guild.

Anonymous said...

Your a-social framework is too unique and special, to give it up for a small increase in raiding performance.

Often, with people and bad habits, there is no "one and only exception to the rule", there is only the "first exception". This might very well be an indicator for other people to start demanding more social stuff. And they will allways find reasons for it to be "important". There will be drama.

If you want better raiding performance, spend more time making your guild known with more serious raiders to get them to join your cause and dont cater to socials.

Venosaur said...

Pay them. Pay to those who have an 85 alt-healer, to kick their main from the guild and bring the healer to raids. Just pay the reroll, I mean, some vague calcul of all the money they endorsed in their main to their healer. Or offer them discounts to craft 359 ilvl items, BoE's, offer "to help" to get enough tol barad badges to get the healer trinquet, etc.
If they really want to raid as a healer but don't because of the no-alt rule, offer them some economic incentive.

Anonymous said...

I do not understand why you can't raid with unguilded alts if they are needed for raid to commence. This way, you get needed healer and do not break any rule.

Anonymous said...

I always thought this rule didn't go well with your other rules. Saying "keep /g uncluttered", "no terrible names", "read the rules and be prepared" and so on all mesh well together - they all work towards establishing a proper environment in which the guild chat isn't filled with chitchat for people who don't want it, people take raiding seriously enough not to waste other people's time and so on.

But how does "you can't have any alts" fit in? In your own words, if I recall correctly, it's intended to discourage the social behavior of feeling good about wanting to see SOME progress more than working towards real progress.

The most obvious complaint to me is that there are things you have no way of doing without an alt - a mage can't heal, and a rogue can't tank. The second complaint is that no one is harmed if Johnny plays an alt for idiotic reasons. The other rules were all intended to prevent behavior which would affect other guildmembers, but this rule seems fairly contrived. Now, The PuG was founded on these rules and has apparently done quite well, but are you sure this rule is being enforced for the right reasons? I mean, are you making this rule because you think the guild environment as a whole will be better off for it, or are you enforcing it so that nobody will have 'hobbies' you don't have?

Inquisitor said...

I have 4 characters at level 80, and one at 85. It's how I'm keeping a lid on play-time this expansion, basically.

Of course, it's a Druid, so I can (and do) swap between roles, but it's amazing how much 'progress' I'm not lacking, versus guildies with four times my playtime since Cata.

Yagamoth said...

Reading the other comments, I can safely say:

- Alts are useful and could make you raid more often/more efficient/more effective/better whatever.

Assuming you WANT the alts in your raid for mentioned reasons, we have to think about the way which causes the least damage to your rules.

My approach would be: Do alts really have to be in your guild to get into your raids?

According to the rules, people are allowed to invite non-The Pug-people into their raids, but then they are no longer protected by The Pug rules. So, inviting an alt into a raid isn't forbidden at all. It simply would disable The Pug rules as it isn't a guild group anymore.

Adding exceptions to rules is usually a bad thing. But in this case I'd say it's the better way to go than to set up new rules of "how, why, when and for which reasons" an alt can be invited into the guild and removing other rules.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, it seems like most of your rules are designed to weed Arthasdklol-type players. The 'no lolling' rule seems like a good way to filter out those players.

Suppose you have been raiding with somebody for a while. They play their hunter well, making good use of CC, defensive cooldowns, etc. while being a knowledgeable and reasonable member of the raid. Wouldn't most of these qualities still be there if they played a priest? You already screened them once.

The no alts rule creates an incentive for players that you want in the guild to lie to you in order to get an alt in the guild. That's dumb.

Besides, what's the harm in having alts? More often, they're an *asset* on nights when you are short on one role. At least for me, raiding with alts is better than begging /trade for an hour in order to find a healer.

Unknown said...

I take a slightly different view on this - people bringing in alts may not be doing so for epeen reasons, but could be making a sacrifice "for the good of the guild". The problem that arises here is one of *expectations* - once MrHunter has brought his priest to fill a healing spot once, all eyes will be on him to do the same next time there's a missing healer.

I'll be watching the outcome of this closely, I left my guild at the end of Wrath (to level a new character in The PuG) due to being pressured into raiding on an alt after making the mistake once of bringing that toon when we were short of a key raid buff.

Josef said...

I think Andru has the best response so far.
From my perspective though:
I rerolled from a US client to join the EU. Being able to level multiple alts in the PuG would be hugely beneficial as it would maximise blue xp. Do not underestimate how effective the levelling bonuses from being in a high level guild are!

At 85 though? Choose an alt and stick with it.
We pretty much have this system already with the achievement alts going for Stay Classy.

Sjonnar said...

Back when i played, i levelled a bunch of alts just so i could try out new styles of play; no epeen involved. Eventually i settled on a resto druid because i found healing more interesting (and challenging) than DD.

My suggestion is this: allow all members one (1) alt, which must fill a different role than their main. (For example, if the main is a paladin, mainspec prot, offspec ret, then the 'utility alt' must be healer mainspec) Both characters must satisfy all guild rules in order to remain. (no gz, no rofl, no dumb names, must log on once per month, etc.) In the public note for that character, it will state that it is [main]'s alt.

Scott said...

I think having alts in would benefit your guild

You said "leveling and gearing 2 chars is much more time than one with 2 specs. I'm afraid of instead of having a great warrior tank, I'll have an almost raid ready priest and warrior."

Well, if I'm in your guild on my warrior tank, I'm going to level my priest anyway, if he's in teh guild or not, so either way I';m splitting my time between the 2 cahracters, so the quality of my warrior already "suffers" from splitting the time.

I'm inside the guild on said priest, maybe I see the guild chat call that a tank just left teh raid and you need a replacement...I can see that call, switch characters, and your raid can continue. If I'm not in the guild on my priest, I dont see the call, so I cant offer to step in....

The rule we have in my guild, and in previous guilds works fine....you can have as many alts as you like, but only your main gets into the main raids..UNLESS the following (rare) circumstances are true
1. The role of your alt can't be covered by any currently online main
2. Your main isnt needed to make the raid happen

So basically, the only chance you have to raid on your main is if the alternatve is for us not raiding...it happens maybe 2-3 times a year at the most, and we raid 3/week

I would have thought with a setup liek you have in the PUG, you would massively benefit from having some flexibility in your roster to ensure raiding happens...

I would actually go one further and say I strong expect that part of your roster is already alts, in the sense that I think some people will be raiding on their mains in other guilds, and with the PUG on "offnights"

Incidentally, if you relaxed the alt rule, there's a very good chance I would join on my 2 alts, and that;s a warrior tank & druid healer, both with dps offspecs, (covering both melee and range)
Meaning that 1 player could literally cover whatever role was needed to fill any raid.....

I dont imagine for one minute I'm unique in having that flexibility of characters either, I think you're missing out on quite a lot with restricting alts

Unknown said...

I think that as long as alts are held to the same standards as mains, that there is no reason to exclude them. The one suggestion I would give is that they be treated exactly as mains. Same rank, no notes reminding anyone of who's alt they are, etc. This way you avoid the issues of them having an excuse "sorry, this is just my alt" and social expectations on both sides. If you don't know they have a healer alt you can't ask them to log it on, and so they don't feel "guilty" for playing whichever toon they want. It also makes it easier for them to make the choices you talk about (roles and competition) based on the current status of the guild instead of how it was when they joined.

Oblivions Pastor said...

My main is a druid I chose this because of the flexibility of the class. I healed the front end of Wrath (nax and ulduar) I was ranged DD in the middle (totc and beginning of ICC) then after we had cleared ICC I raided as tank. in cata I am Melee DD and have enjoyed the opportunity to explore all the roles and specs available to the druid class. For me the will to raid is higher than the need to play a specific class/role/spec and I am happy to do anything my class would permit to raid. When asked which I prefer I answer I dont care, each spec/role presents different challenges in a raid environment and I find them all interesting in their own way.

Some people with alts will have a similar mentality but chose a main without the flexibility of a druid and so have an alt to experience the game a different way. The no alt rule as I understood it was a way to keep pressure off people to change to the in favour class/spec in order to progress when the actual difference it makes is nominal when compared to player skill. You have made similar claims about the difference between best in slot gems/enchants and those cheaper but valued just under.

You can keep your no alt rule and allow up to 2 people with characters outside of the PUG into your raids and still get all your guild achievements and progress rankings. Of course they still need to follow all the rules and get kicked from the raid for the same reasons as normal. I couldn't see any of your guild rules that state you must be in the guild to attend raids, those rules are there to weed out undesirable people and I suppose if you know a non guild member in a raid is an alt of a guild member you can guild kick them for breaking rules too. This isn't the same as enforced spec as in my case the choice is an easy one stay DD and dont raid or change to healer and go raid. The one that makes raiding an option wins every time.

It only becomes an issue if you drop below the level that makes it a guild group as that compromises your goals. Everything else can be upheld. Do you want to achieve your goals faster or hold your ideals to a point where they aren't benefiting your goal.

Which is more goblinish?

Foo said...

Pragmatism vs idealism? I choose pragmatism.

Your damaged ego from backing down vs raiding? I choose backing down.

Your word vs breaking it - ask guild members, and vote on it.


However there is no game requirement that you must only raid with guild toons. If someone has a toon that they would like to try healing, but is not in guild then let them run a few times with their out of guild toon.

Personally I enjoy both tanking and healing. I have a DK and priest. I am incapable of doing both with either of these toons.

Anonymous said...

Wait...

You've got ten people online and ready to go do progression content but you're short a healer, and you'd rather give that up than let your rogue go play his priest for one night?

*boggle*

I understand that you personally may prefer to stick with one character. But you are the *only* person I've ever encountered in WoW that doesn't have any alts and prefers it that way. I'm not going to give you a speech about alts because you specifically said you're not going to change your mind there, but perhaps it's time for you to accept that you're in the minority in this respect and let your rogue play his priest once in a while.

Unknown said...

I think a good idea would be to allows alts if they play a different role than the main. In other words you can't have two DD's in the guild, but you could have a DD and a healer. This way, it seems more of a win/win as there is more chance that the needed role is available.

The Lazor said...

I can understand your logic behind not letting just anyone in your guild, and furthermore, not letting alts in at all. however, i do disagree with you, and can now point, based on your post, to the reason why at least a general alt allowance could be a good thing. case in point:

i roll alts, nearly all of which are in the higher level range, a number of which are 85. i do this for a number of reasons, some you mention (mules, professions), but mostly because i enjoy the mechanics of the game and like to experience them all. i honestly want to be good or great at a number of classes/roles. what does this do? it allows me to be a stop gap measure for raids that would otherwise not happen (i.e. not enough healers, would be helpful to have a druid for bRez, etc).

i admit, i also loathe the arthsdklol players, though i don't have quite the intolerance for "social" players that you seem to -- i just choose, for the most part, to play around them. i say that to say that i can see why alts (of all misc levels and classes, etc) could be disallowed from a goal oriented guild. but, i would submit this as an answer: why not let alts be allowed as long as they meet certain requirements, such as an item level that is 'raid ready'. once the person gears his toon appropriately, they may enter the guild under alt status, allowing them to only be used in times of no-shows or limited class availability.

your offer to most people to kick a main to make room for their new main would, i am sure, not been a big deal before cataclysm, but now, with guild rep, they are committing reputation suicide. in essence you are saying "thank you for offering to help us make some progression tonight, but, not only will you suffer by not having a chance to gear up your main, i am going to personally punish your flexibility by erasing your guild reputation."

what is the incentive? hence, the option to have a high level alt rule in place. heck, who needs to have 100 lvl 6 warriors in the guild? i understand! but, i think you'd be missing out on a valuable natural resource that is being offered to you for no price... people's time.

Unknown said...

I think a happy medium would be to allow an alt if it plays a different role than their main. In other words, they would not be allowed two DD's but they could bring in a DD and a healer. This way it raises the chances that a missing role is available while limiting the filling up of the roster with alts.

Ermak said...

So we've reached 9/12 and almost killed Al'Akir without using alts. And then suddenly we need them, eh? Sounds fishy and weak-willed to me.
If people really want an alt in a high-level guild - well, make one (or mass-join into already existing and convert it into "The PuG"-alts type).
Oh, yea, about "Why should we level another guild?". If you've bothered yourself with leveling an alt or two or five you can do the same for the guild, no?

Anonymous said...

What I really hate about alts in a raiding guild scenario , especially in these days of 10 clique crews. Is it is a excuse for guild leaders to exclude new people or people who are not in the core clique to play. Its part of the reason I am not putting any effort in to my Main's progression right now. Its insidious because they don't intend to exclude you, its never admitted but thats the result.
On the other hand I truly am enjoying playing a new set of alts on a different server. Running gold making and just passing leisure time. Like doing a crossword puzzle. Now that I think of it a crossword puzzle is probably harder and more rewarding but *shrug* I like being in a MMO and just being mindless after a long day at work.

Nielas said...

I find this stance on alts to be strange coming from someone who used to run blue geared Ulduur raids. Did you do that just for the social or 'epeen' reasons?

Using only blue gear on a character who has access to top level epics is the equivalent to having an alt. You do it to experience parts of the game in a different way and test your limitations.

Venosaur said...

@Nielas

the purpose of doing Ulduar in blues was to demostrate that the myth of "more gear" was false, that the only thing you need to raid in normal content is skill. To prove that is not equivalent to do it with an alt, is the equivalent of saying "It is you who suck, not your gear or class"

Anonymous said...

The no-alt rule essentially weeds out certain undesirable attitudes among your guild members:
1. Playing more instead of playing more efficiently.
2. Playing over-represented classes as main instead of choosing a class that fills a needed role as main.

As for (1), I believe the only rational attitude is to stop playing once you have beaten the game with your main, not start alts to "win" again. You should encourage the former behavior and you'll wind up with better people in your guild as a result.

In (2), if a person enjoys both healing and DPS, then the only reason for keeping a DPS main can be social. It is obvious that if he makes his healing character main, he will never raid on his DPS on guild runs. Yet for some reason, this person chooses to play half the content as DPS instead of all the content as healer. If both roles are enjoyed, the only conclusion can be that a well-geared DPS character provides them with more "social factor" than a well-geared healer. Eliminating that attitude is another important aspect of your project.

Trelocke said...

Pick. Up. Group.

You've named your guild after this for pete's sake. Why is having a willing player jump on an unguilded alt so everyone can raid so far beyond the scope of your guild rules?

Direct quote from you just a few days ago: One of the largest differences between successful and unsuccessful people is that the former believes that failure is better than not even trying, while the latter prefers inactivity over failure.

So you will bring mains without gems and enchants because it is better to try and fail than inactivity, but you draw the line at bringing unguilded alts? What kind of logic is that?

The no-alt rule is a good rule for whether a character can join your guild or not. Lots of guilds have this rule and do just fine. The rule isn't the problem here. Canceling a raid when a player is willing to bring an unguilded alt is the problem and quite honestly, asinine.

Unknown said...

Don't allow alts, gevlon. If the DD who has a healer is willing to bring him in to raid, then either he brings him in, or he doesn't raid. If he wants to raid enough, he'll bring the healer. If not, do you really want him in your raid group to begin with?

Joshua said...

No guild invites for alts.

There is simply no need. Many people pointed out that a healer doesn't have to be in the guild to get an invite to the raid (since not inviting them to a raid simply because they aren't in The PUG would be a violation of guild rules).

Why not offer a incentive? For every DD that switches to a healer for that raid/boss so there can be a raid offer a 10% increase to the boss pot. Its completely fair to the healer mains that are guild members. They heal because they like it. Or just give a pot incentive to all unique roles (healer/tank).

@grim "Feels like" is a social concept. "These are the reasons I have an alt" is a logical reason and more goblinesque.

EX. I have an alt to tank when I want to have fun tanking. I have a healer when I want to have fun healing. They aren't the same class because I have more fun/better throughput using each character for its intended roll. That is why I have alts. Notice its not a social but a logical reason.

Stumblebeard said...

My father is a judge. He has some ideas that took me a while to get my head around. First laws are there to govern the masses however not all situations need to be handled by the law. In other words a competent and wise person (or group) can sometimes allow things that are not covered by the law.

This particular post of yours amuses me. It almost seems like your goblin ideas are not really goblin like at all. I would think that the pure form of goblinism would be take advantage of whatever you could.

Michael said...

I would have to agree with those who say it would be an abandonment of the core idea behind The PUG.

Most guilds are more social and do consider making people feel appreciated along with just pushing for progression. This approach is so prevalent because it works, it has strengths and weaknesses that anti-social guilds do not, and the strengths generally outweight the weaknesses.

If you want to maintain the purity of your experiment, you cannot deviate from your own rules and ideals. Otherwise, you become just another hardcore-casual raid guild with odd chat and loot rules.

So yeah, I say just suck it up and accept that you can't get only the advantages of being anti-social without also the drawbacks, like not being able to count on alts to fill missing spots.

For what it's worth, I certainly would rather be in a social guild that excluded M&S than in an anti-social guild. That's a lot like what my current guild already is. It's curious to me that a strong player like you, with elitist tendencies like the rest of us (the goods), would be so all-inclusive in your guild recruitment. o.O

Longclaw said...

Allow a person the maximum of 1 alternate character that preforms a role which their main does not.

A Player who has a Striker as their primary role in the guild can NOT have another character which is a Striker as a main role, but can have a Defender or Healer.

It will get slightly complicated since about half the classes can preform multiple group roles, but it should not be too hard to enforce a players' designated group role.

One added benefit from this is that it will help people to gain another perspective of the fight, and can even help to alleviate burnout, increasing retention rates.

The main thing to watch out for is a person becoming passive-aggressively jaded about always playing on what they consider their Alternate and not being able to play their preferred character. However, you seem to have a fairly intelligent group of players and a unique reward system that if not entirely eliminate this, would greatly lessen it.

TheGrumpyElf said...

I have two raid geared healers for that exact reason. Soon to have three.

I used them and let my main sit out for about 5 weeks because we had no choice.

It has nothing to do with social as you call it. I want to raid. Raiding on my main is my preference. If I can go on a healer and at least do something it is better enjoyment from my time in game then just calling it a night because we did not have a healer.

If anything, it is the most a-social thing in the world. Instead of pugging a healer and having to explain things to them and basically introduce your style of play and your raid rules you skip the social part and stick with the group that knows how you do things and there are no need to exchange pleasantries.

When I go into a raid I want to just go and do. I do not want to sit around explaining to a pug.

I would gladly have 10 raid ready characters, 1 of each class, just to be able to avoid having to pug someone and having to talk to them.

You call alts social, I must disagree in this case. Alts (for raiding) are about as a-social as you can get.

An alt means you do not put yourself in the position that you need to socialize with a new person.

If anything, I figure you would embrace raiding alts with open arms. As long as the person is skilled enough at both the alt and their main.

I give a thumbs up to alts.

Anonymous said...

The only thing that people loose by leaving with one alt and entering with another is guild reputation. While it would certainly solve their problems to just get reinvited on a healing alt, it would also make them loose the fruit of their time spent in the guild and effort put into obtaining said reputation.

On the other hand, as Imraith Don Stantos said, guild is based on this rule, just like some others.

The only solution I can come up with is altering said rule (instead of removing it completely or introducing new one) - where people with exalted reputation with the guild are allowed to have an alt, as long as it serves different role than their main; so if main is a DD, alt must be either healing or tanking in raids. Those who don't like that rule simply don't have to abide by it and have no alts joining the guild.

Anonymous said...

We allow alts in our guild, however every person MUST declare a main (& mainspec) and their main (& mainspec) is their raider. They are ONLY allowed to raid on an alt if explicitly asked by the raid leader. Same thing goes for offspecs. Gear goes to mainspec over offspec regardless of main vs alt. the alt just helped kill a boss, and is entitled to it's share of hte loot. We setup a certain amount of rules around usage of offpsecs and alts. http://gdd.guildomatic.com

Vargen of Gladius de Deus said...

Another reason we allow alts is so that we can find people if we are forming an adhoc raid. If no one had alts in guild, the guild would probably only have people online for raids and very few otherwise. However, I am the first to admit we are a very social guild. http://gdd.guildomatic.com

Anonymous said...

1. Don't invite alts.
2. Do let guild members bring their healing toons if required.
3. Pay a bounty to guildies bringing non-main healers(2 shares of raid pot).
4. Also, pay for outside healers - one extra share for healer, half a share for recruiter.

This seems asocial.

Ron said...

Having alts in the guild I think is fine. If you want to make sure that the alt contributes instead of bringing the guild down then make a rule saying that the alt has to be raid-ready ( or heroic-ready) before it can be invited.

That way you know you're getting a toon that will help the guild, not create more work for it.

Grim said...

@Joshua
Did you miss the part where I said that anything social must have something to do with society?

If you didn't miss it, where is the refutation or at least contrary opinion?

Also, how do you decide what is more fun for you? Is it not a feeling? Fun is not a logical or goblinesque concept.

"I will play my tank now, because I want to have fun tanking" is equivalent for all intents and purposes to "I will play my tank now, because I feel like it"

Anonymous said...

In my opinion the "no alts" rule is a failure of definition. In reality it's actually a "one character per account" rule due to technical limitations in the game. There is nothing preventing a single person from having multiple characters in your guild. This is most likely a border case as I don't know many people that have multiple accounts.

The other thing I would like to point out is that if a person has a character in your guild, from your perspective that is their "main", but in reality they could very well consider it an "alt" and only login to raid and/or show enough activity.

How do you successfully define an "alt" when the definition changes based on the perspective and level of information available (I told you it's my alt, or I tried to join a 2nd character on the same account into the guild).

-Verm

Leeho said...

@Anonymus who suspect social reasons to play dps

Why would there be social reasons? He simply can like dpsing more than healing, and that's it. So he prefers dpsing as main, and sometimes he find it entertaining to heal. It's like you love apples, raw, baked, and such, but sometimes you feel like you want an orange. But if someone says "you should stick to one fruit" (which is stupid as is, but still) you would prefer apples, and not oranges, cause you like them more.

@Gevlon

I just noticed your "don't try to convince me that alts are good" point. It's very interesing why you would write a thing like this. Socials don't like to be wrong or to be proved wrong, so they don't want to see disproving arguments. But thinking person knows that noone, himself included, can be 100% right on any topic, anyone can make mistakes and such. So why do you try to ask your readers to not bring up those arguments? Why in the first place you don't want to hear our opinion on alts? It's not a social reason, but what then?

Ephemeron said...

The question is: "allow members this slack from the a-social ideas for better raiding results or make our stand here even if it raiding suffers from it?"

Look at your initial post about PuG that started it all:

"The points to be proven (or falsified):

* The behavioral rules of the Ganking project work and perfectly capable to keep M&S out.
* There is no need for "job-like" approach for the raiding. It can be perfectly no-obligation and casual
* There is no need for dedicated leaders if the goals are properly set and feedback can be provided by the system and peers
...
Since there is no competitive goal (we must win WG), the project is much more resilient against temporary downtimes. It can happen that there will be weeks when we can only raid with 8 people, but hey, we can do Naxx8 or old world raids, surviving the bad times."


I think the answer is clear here. According to your own mission statement, adherence to the behavioral rules is the fundamental principle of the project, while raid progress is an optional thing.

Not being able to raid due to lack of healing mains is not a failure (you can always go to Naxx or Molten Core).
Inviting alts, on other hand, is a clear admission that the behavioral rules DON'T work.

Were the socials right all along? Is it impossible to raid beyond a certain point without being "an elitist nolifer with many alts"?

tytalus said...

If you're not simply going to recruit more healers, then perhaps one of your exceptions applies.

"HM guilds with very low playerbase demands one to be able to do several roles on alts"

At the same time you say things like not wanting a priest to run as a healer if they prefer to be shadow.

If you can't find new healers to recruit, then can your playerbase be called sufficient for your needs? Does it begin to make sense to make demands, as with the hardmode guild exception you've noted?

For my part, I play a DPS DK who can tank, and my first alt was a pally healer (formerly my least favorite healer type) because I heard about the challenge of Cata healing. The DPS DK mode is my favorite thing to do. But I have enjoyed learning the healing craft in Cata. And I think pallies are more interesting than they used to be.

Is this 'e-peening'? To want the challenge? Is it different from running a lowbie duo through a dungeon designed to take five of them?

Anonymous said...

Back those day where i pugged* in wotlk...many times when the PUG didnt find a healer or Tank someone said i can log onto my main / alt.....since your Guild is a Pug ...why not let people having their alts in the guild.

Caramael said...

Your opinion on alts implies people should only play WoW when they have the opportunity to progress their main character. This is completely valid if you forget about all social reasons (mostly having fun and wasting time relaxing) to play WoW.

But the fact that players in The PuG are offering to bring their alt to a raid does NOT imply they don't agree with you on that. It only means they are willing to spend more time playing WoW than you do (to progress a second character).

You should take advantage of this opportunity, so you can progress your own character, instead of logging off.
You should allow alts, and treat them the same as any other character in the guild, because it will allow players to offer their healing/tank/dps-services freely and let's them compete for raid spots. It might even lead to more/parallel raids, something you're trying to motivate as well.

Also, if gear is an issue on progression, it's irrelevant anyway; you won't be improving your gear if raids keep being cancelled.

Andenthal said...

NO ALTS

Having multiple raiding toons is the epitome of "social". "I have 3 toons that are 4/12" is more appealing than, "I have 1 toon that's 12/12," to a social. (exception: if you are in a top 1% guild)

Assuming I'm correct in the guild rules; there's nothing stopping someone from removing their DD toon from the guild on Tuesday, inviting their healer toon for a raid, then reversing that Wednesday, correct?

As Ephemeron said, "Inviting alts, on other hand, is a clear admission that the behavioral rules DON'T work."

Keltas said...

If the intention of the rule is to prevent people from using the guild as a social tool, you might only allow 85 or sufficiently geared alts into the guild. A lot of the 'lolguild' members will have alts guilded so they can have /g during tedious leveling periods, and /g will turn into Barren's chat. However, other rules you have in place should prevent that as well.

I might look at it like this. Allowing a member to utilize dual specs to fulfill a role almost certainly results in one of those specs being inferior to the other. Just as an alt would be inferior to a main character. The difference between an alt and a secondary spec is primarily the wasted time getting the alt to max level and to a lesser extent getting it geared to perform adequately in the content (some gear can be shared between specs in some classes, but with bear/resto druids it's a completely different set). I'll assume that even with the no alt rule, your guild members are still leveling alts and wasting time on them, but the rule prevents those alts from providing the guild any benefit.

I see no shame or slippery slope in changing or removing a rule that while well intentioned may not be either necessary or performing as needed. It is your goals that need to be maintained, not the rules. Rules are social constructs to attempt to accomplish goals. Sometimes they are ill concieved or situations change their usefulness. If they aren't producing the correct results, the logical thing to do is to modify or remove them.

If allowing alts into the guild will help you accomplish some goals without hindering others, it is clearly the correct thing to do. If there are negative effects which cannot be negated with existing rules or new rules those should be weighed against any positive effects.

Nielas said...

Venosaur said
"the purpose of doing Ulduar in blues was to demostrate that the myth of "more gear" was false, that the only thing you need to raid in normal content is skill. To prove that is not equivalent to do it with an alt, is the equivalent of saying "It is you who suck, not your gear or class""

That is pretty much the same reason why I play multiple characters. I aim to prove the the myth of the 'main vs alt' is false and it is the player skill that matters and now which character you use. ie "It's you who suck and not the character you play"

By the end of vanilla I had 8 raid-ready characters and by the end of WotLK I had 5 raid-ready characters. I made sure that I could play all of them to the best of my abilities and I would not be a liability to the raid group.

So I consider the myth of "alts are for socials" to be bunk.

Brindle said...

Your own post disproves your opinion on the usefullness of alts. As you state, allowing alts will allow raids to take place. You profit by a raid, you do not profit by doing nothing. So logic dictates that you add one more 'reason for alts'. That is, filling sparse/missing roles in the guild.

So, only allow max level alts who are raid worthy. Anything else is just a playtoy. Only allow one alt per member, and only allow that alt if the member is willing to use that alt as intended - to fill out raid spots when the role is missing at the time.

Anonymous said...

I think this just shows social guilds have one up on you by having Alts. I never understood the no alt rule. I have been in raiding guilds where we needed a certain comp and that was only going to happen if someones alt came. Nothing wrong with it in my view. Ihave many Alts as I want them for the professions. I raid on one character though. In IFC days it was easy to raid on two of them but these days to do a good second non guild raid is rare

Anonymous said...

I have to say, I must be an exception. I dropped my geared main to fill a slot my raid team needed. I'm not a "warrior" or a "hunter" I'm a game player. Dropping my main for my alt was an easy decision.

Keep offering. Somebody will eventually decide it's worth doing.

Anonymous said...

I like alot of your ideas, but you have some fairly silly ones as well. The no-alt rule is one of these very, very silly ideas.

That being said, when you start to backtrack on rules that you see as part of the core philosophy of the guild, it's a slippery slope. Keep the rule.

Anonymous said...

Why not PuG the healers?

What if those healers just so happened to be guild members on another character?

Is there some sort of social aspect where you have to raid with guild members only?

kahalm said...

Wasn't the Pug a healer and tank heaven just some time ago?

Joshua said...

@grim

Well I did in fact miss your last comment.

I suppose you could interpret fun as a feeling. I tend to define it as a chemical response and of course measurable and therefore logical.

You are right, having alts that have no relationship to others "can" be an a-social activity. It is, however, very difficult to differentiate a true a-social alt horder from social alt horder.