How it all began

Everything happens for a reason, and my obsession with alts is no different. Now I'm at the point where sticking with only one class just seems a foreign way of thinking to me, but it wasn't always that way. I played my first character, Deadbare the rogue, well into the 50's before I created my first alt, and he was mainly there to take up time for my rogue to rest at an inn.

Blackbare, my druid, started out on a whim I had. As I got close to 60 with my rogue I found very few quests left to do an still a few levels left, so I resorted to grinding. I hate grinding, but it had to be done, and with the double XP bonus you get when rested I decided to only grind when I had a good amount built up. This led to creating a second character to play in the meantime.

Why a druid? Well I though shapeshifting was cool. I actually didn't know that the forms each served different purposes, I just wanted to be a bear or a cat. Once I started out I found that being able to heal myself was the best thing ever. No sitting and eating, just cast a spell and move on. The druid slowly grew on me, but the rogue was still my main and getting to 60 would take priority.

Upon reaching 60 I was in a semi-end-game guild. Most players had a 60, with some up and coming, along with alts that were being leveled but in the guild so they could still chat with us. Problem was we had lots of rogues, and they were running MC and ZG and such, which I wasn't ready for yet. I managed some Scholo and Strat runs with some of the less experienced guildies and PUGs, but with so much DPS out there it was frustrating trying to find groups.

After a bunch of runs in which I never came out with any gear I was getting fed up. How was I supposed to join the rest of my guild if I couldn't get myself decently geared up? I noticed that every time I tried to get a group together the hardest thing to get was a healer and that if I had a healer I would be getting in groups easily.

Now at that time priests were pretty much considered THE healer class, bar none. Sure I had a druid, but everybody wanted a priest. I made up my mind to create a priest and join the guild in the endgame when I was ready. Of course I knew I wouldn't get her to 60 before the expansion, but priests would always be healers, so I would fill that role in end-game no matter what.

She leveled as holy for a while, but it was getting ridiculously difficult and I switched her to shadow. It was great, and I knew that getting to level 40 I would get shadow form, which pretty much makes you and your mount look awesome, which I cared about more than the stat boosts.

Now I had three characters, and they were all fun in their own way. Then came the announcement that shamans would be playable by Alliance. Shamans always seemed awesome to me, and there was a time that they were PvP champs, the bane of the Alliance. Now we would get them, and then and there I made up my mind that creating a shaman would be first priority when I got the expansion, and that's exactly what I did.

Not only was the shaman fun, but the new Draenei starting area was really cool and well thought out too. I went enhancement for the high melee DPS it provided and haven't looked back, although I respecced when I found I had picked some of the useless talents out of that tree.

With four characters sitting on my account I was well into becoming obsessed with alts, and now that I had witnessed firsthand the fun I could have with each class, I was becoming very curious about the others.

This pretty much led to all the other characters, and while at first I went Horde to play with a friend, I eventually decided the change of faction would add even more variety to the game.

My hunter came from a desire I had to play a hunter ever since I first got the game and watched one of my friends play one. The mage was because I had seen two undead mages just obliterate a bunch of Alliance in WPL. The rest I just figured I had everything else, why not complete the set?

I've come a long way since then. One 70, two over 60, with two more coming up in their early 50s. Of course with how limited my play time is I don't expect to ever be going on any raids or even end-game instances, but unlike many of you that's not what makes the game fun for me. I like leveling up, doing quests, and I like to do it on all different characters.