Is ten character slots enough?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Nov 30th 2006 at 5:30PM
You may or may not be aware of the fact that you are only allowed ten characters per realm. For some, this is not a problem, and for others it is. Kinless writes about his dilemma, with the upcoming expansion, in which he will find himself wanting 13 character slots on a single realm. (I feel his pain -- I'm going to have to pick a character to delete in order to roll my expansion Blood Elf on my usual realm. And then I'll have to delete a second character if I decide I want to try my hand at playing a Draenei!)
Of course, Blizzard allows for this, in a way. You can always put your alts on a different realm, which has the notable side-effect of giving you something to do when your usual realm is down -- but that means playing away from friends and guild-mates. Starting over on a new realm isn't for the faint of heart: when you've made a name for yourself on your old realm, and regardless of your alt's name you're likely able to find friends and help when needed.
So is ten character slots per realm really enough -- or do you find yourself wanting more?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Expansions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sockninja Nov 30th 2006 6:30PM
10 is lots... we all have that lvl 1 shaman/mage/etc we just couldnt bring outselves to grind :)
Chaos Nov 30th 2006 8:47PM
I wish I could have more slots.
I currently have 4 lvl 60s, 3 lvl 40+ and 3 chars I use to hold my loot.
I have over 60 rare greens, blues and epics, excluding profession materials.
Now I have to delete one of my 3 bank alts to play a Draenei Shaman :(
I am going have to come up with a way to send the items that's currently on my bank alt to another alt with room to hold...
I can have room if I have 500g... but as a casual player, I don't farm gold, so I have only about 350g total on all my characters.
Sylythn Nov 30th 2006 6:51PM
Considering I only have time to play 1-2 characters, I don't understand the need for more than about 5, let alone more than 10. Yes, you can park alts at banks, auction houses, summoning spots, and do other cheap tricks to make life easier. But I've spent my year playing WoW traveling back to a city when I want to auction things - waiting until I'm at a bank to sort things out of my bags - and selling crap if I don't have enough room to store it all. 13? Come on - you seriously NEED and/or PLAY all 13 of those characters?
Bunkai Nov 30th 2006 7:23PM
When I first started playing back in the beginning of 2005, I wanted to create a character of each race and each class (not meaning an Elf of each, Dwarf of each, etc.), but now that I have been playing a while, I look back, and realize that no matter how many characters I have built over time, I still gravitate to a small few if more than 1 or 2 at all.
With that in mind, I started deleting characters. I now have a single character on the realm that I began on Garona, that is/was my primary character on that server used for end-game raiding that has all his shiny epics.
Now that I have moved to a PvP server, Hakkar, I have a raiding toon as my primary that I usually only use for guild raids, or to farm some twink gear for my new character that I'm working on, a hunter.
Those are the only three toons that I have now, and I find that it makes my gaming more enjoyable, because when I'm on one of them, I don't spend time thinking about what I could be doing on a different one instead.
It makes my WoW life much less stressful in the long run, and I'd highly recommend that to anyone out there that is an Alt-o-holic like I was.
Dave Nov 30th 2006 6:06PM
I share an account with a friend of mine that lives with me, and altogether we only have 4 toons. Who needs 10 toons? really. I mean I guess you gotta get your money's worth...but 10 is a bit much.
Will Nov 30th 2006 6:18PM
Blizzard allows for more than 10 characters per realm in another way too: buy a second account. Also at that point your alts can then trade with your mains directly, immediately, rather than relying on the 1-hr-to-arrive mail system. And, your alt-enchanter can then start actually enchanting things for your mains, too, rather than being just a "disenchant-junk-er".
That's what I did. Because yes, 10 wasn't enough. I wanted to try out any number of different combinations of classes, races, tradeskills (not to mention the always necessary AH char). And not have to erase any of my time and effort in any of them. And not have to keep starting over on another realm (that first 10g is a b*tch you know). Sure, I played for 4 months and didn't have any character over level 27, but I always had something new to try if I got bored with any particular class/race/trade combination, and that's what was important to me.
Freehugz Nov 30th 2006 6:20PM
9 classes +1 bank
10's good enough for me.
Ell Nov 30th 2006 6:30PM
I like being able to log in and play whichever class I'm in the mood to play today. 9 Classes + 1 Bank = 10 Characters. So easy enough.
Ell Nov 30th 2006 7:44PM
Hmm... Apparently I am the echo today.
Dave Nov 30th 2006 7:50PM
I think the need for character slots for MOST people will be eliminated with the patch. You'll get 4 more bank slots and another backpack slot and the bank slots are capped at 25g (at least on the test) so you'll have a lot more storage space in general. Add that to the much more easy to get 18-slot bags and the 20-slot bags that are going to be available (and in theory 22 and 24 slot bags, along with 30-slot profession bags) and space should be much less of an issue, so you won't need 3 alts to hold all the crap you can't bear to get rid of.
IMO, people who play on PVE servers should feel lucky that they can have characters on both sides, PVP players don't even get that luxury. I think the PVP players probably don't have their max of 10 characters mostly, since what would be the point? Once you get one of each class, other than gimmick characters and a dedicated bank alt, there's not much left to try out, right?
Super Guest Man 9000 Nov 30th 2006 7:54PM
At #1. You could try bouncing your items back and forth through the mail until you can come up with enough room. An item will sit in your mail box for 28 days before it returns to the sender or is destroyed. I use this method to keep a rather large cache of rune cloth from clogging up my banks.
Now as far as 10 characters are concerned. I have 2 60's about 4 mid 40's and 2 30's. I have one of every class and I have a place holder for the name of my Draenei character. If I want to make two draeneis I have the space. Right now I can make due with 10 slots, but what about future expansions? What if they release more races and classes? We're gonna want to make character of those too and by that time I doubt 10 will be enough
Tallens Dec 1st 2006 4:28AM
BEing Guild Leader and not trusting all my people with the cash, I have two accounts to keep the amount of chars around.
3x Guild Banks, 2x Personal Banks, My Main and alts in totalt 14 Chars.
For this I pay Blizzard more than enough of my share, I'll only be upgrading one account for BC but its annoying that Blizzard has done NOTHING for the Guild Bank Situation...- but that's an entire different discussion.
//Tallens'out
Gamerz22 Dec 1st 2006 3:26PM
People seem to forget how good they got it. MAJORITY of other MMORPGs charge extra for every additional character you want. 10 alts should be plenty, as more is just "wtf".
One of the main reason for a cap is to maintain server population. Heck, some people could be random jerks and start taking good character names for the heck of it.
Can't deal with it? Get a second account as suggested here or try playing on another realm. Heck, transfer one of your alts off that realm and thus (at its new realm) create more characters. Might cost $25 USD, but it is better than being charged $5 per addition characters.
People will alsways QQ, and a majority of them are just ignorant to the truth of the matter and lack support from their statements.
Sonburn Dec 1st 2006 12:21PM
#10 Pretty much sums up my thoughts.
I have 7 toons and 2 name/place-holders for the 2 Draenei I will be rolling. In the future I have to imagine they would allow for more. I mean, if you have 10 level 60 toons (god bless you), how can you be expected to delete one to partake in new content?
Wartoad Dec 1st 2006 1:23PM
10 is a lot. I have 4 Bank Alts and haven't even maxed out.
Rob Dec 4th 2006 1:46PM
I would prefer it if they bumped it up to 15, I currently play on 2 servers, 1 for horder char, 1 for alliance. I have 7 horde, and 8 allience. After the expansion I will problably be max.
Why so many?
I like to play almost every class/race. Most are 40+ if not 60's. A few extra character slots doesn't seem to be out of the question.