Tracking alts within the guild
by Mike Schramm 
May 17th 2007 at 1:14PM
Guild banks and VOIP are great, but here's one thing for guilds that I'd like to see: a way to tell whose alts are whose.If your guild is like mine, it's easy to have trouble keeping track of who plays which characters. The guys and girls in our guild play quite a bit, so everyone is usually working on an alt or two, and it's really helpful to know that that 23 mage on right now is actually a well-geared 70 warrior who can tank your instance. But in the standard interface, there's no real way to know who's who-- either you have to learn who plays which alts over time (which leaves you stuck not always knowing exactly who just said hi to you), or you have to come up with a makeshift plan. My guild sticks the main's name in the alt's guild notes, and while sometimes that gets messed up (because an unsuspecting officer changes a note), it usually works OK.
But still, I'd like to see an official interface for it. Now, some players probably use alts as masks to hide behind, which is fine (I have a few secret alts of my own), but if your alt is in the guild, your guild has a right to know the other guild members you play. And an official interface would make it easy-- it would get entered automatically and be easily accessible for everyone. As long as we're working on guild banks and other guild-friendly features, I'd like to see an alt-tracking interface (for just within the guild-- I'm sure that if the same thing hit the Armory, lots of players would cry foul) as well.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Guilds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tibbsy May 17th 2007 1:27PM
The guild I lead is just a bunch of my friends in RL. As such we have no hierarchy of ranks. This lets me use the guild ranks to identify what kind of character each member is. We have a rank for Art, Twink and Bank.
It's worked well for our group for a year and a half. That said, we're a small group of people (about a dozen) and none of us cared for an actual ranking system.
There IS one rank, however, that we use for fun to punish people. When someone does something really stupid in a group run (priest that runs in and fear guys, claiming that Fear was next to Fade), they get demoted to this rank. Just for fun, really. It's a good chuckle.
Arras May 17th 2007 1:28PM
We use the guild notes to specify if someone is an alt
If the toon is your main, only your name is displayed. If it's an alt we just use "Alt-whoever"
Our guild is small enough that most people know which alts belong to whom.
When all else fails and you don't know who just said hi in /g...just say hi back
I think Blizzard could spend their time elsewhere instead of developing a tool we already have
NeuroMan42 May 17th 2007 1:53PM
I vote for actually let guilds see more then 500 damn names. If the Armory site can do it than it can be done in-game.
Baluki May 17th 2007 1:54PM
In most guilds I've been in, there's usually a rank of "Alt" below the other important ranks. And then hopefully your guild leaders are on the ball, so they remember to add your name to your comments.
I sure would like to have a built-in system for tracking alts though. A whole lot of my old friends have started new characters (I myself have 8 others besides my main) and I can't keep track of them all (and don't even know some of them). It would be nice if on a person's label (the name that floats above them) it said something like "Schmucky (Alt of Thatguy)". Naturally, this would have to be a feature that you can turn off.
Killraine May 17th 2007 2:03PM
Erm...l2addons
plenty of guild organization addons, note-making addons, etc
blizz doesn't need to waste time on simple things like this.
msdruid1 May 17th 2007 2:00PM
As the guild leader, the way I over come this is 2 part - 1st I set the guild notes to say that either a toon is a Main, or the name of the main character if its an alt. Then I also have a special rank for alts. It allows me at a glance to see who is on a main or an alt.
Sean May 17th 2007 2:01PM
The "better spend [someone's] time doing [something else]" argument is very weak. If we are talking about a single person with limited resources, then that argument can hold. But, when you try to expand that to large corperations with a much larger resource pool, you really have gauge what percent of their resources it would take to develop this or that. It becomes a much more complicated scenario where you actually need some hard evidence in order to support that claim. I guess I just disagree that this is common sense, at that level.
In this case, we do not already have a tool for this. We have a work-around--a catch all, I suppose. There is a much better way to do this. And, it wouldn't take any significant amount of time away from Blizzard's WoW department to develop it, either. Especially since they have examples from which they can work.
Name Tag - http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/addons/guild/name-tag/
I know that I had a mod a looong time ago that allowed you to combine guild members into a tree view. It worked a little like this.
+ Larry
[expand]
+ Larry
- EvilLarry
- SmartLarry
- SillyLarry
... where Larry is a main and EvilLarry, SmartLarry, and SillyLary are all his alts. Any online characters were highlighted. It was very helpful, but I cannot remember the name.
arose_ca May 17th 2007 2:18PM
I personally use an add-on called guild greet. it allows me to say hello to people when they log on and also lets me identify who is the "main" and who are their alts, so I can identify this easily.
Crumbly May 17th 2007 3:11PM
Great mod just for this: AKA
http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=3747
We have it as a semi-required in guild addon for the most part, and it is very nice. Shows you not only the nickname, but the professions, alt professions, etc.
Says it is out of date, but I am running the latest version just fine.
Warmonkey May 17th 2007 2:17PM
A number of guilds are running the AKA addon which identifies alts in chat.
http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=3747
Players can choose a nickname which appears in chat regardless of which character they are logged in with.
It also provides expanded "who" information for those character.
Doesn't do much good if you're the only one running it, but if you can get the alt-a-holics to run it, it helps keep everyone straight.
Genius Jones May 17th 2007 2:20PM
Umm this is another total non-issue. Make guild rank just for alts, called "Alts." Put alts in there. Put main name in comment. Done.
Lori May 17th 2007 2:52PM
Just curious, but is this really true?
....but if your alt is in the guild, your guild has a right to know the other guild members you play....
Whay does a guild have this right?
John Vilsack May 17th 2007 3:01PM
Altminder for the win.
I have several (hundred) alts myself. When a new one comes into the guild, my public note is set to "Alt Usul"
Everyone who runs the mod has a macro /altm extract guild they click...and suddenly my name appears next to my alt's.
Kinda like Shenanigans(Usul): Hi.
Works great, minimal overhead, and a great addon to keep everything straight!
Todd May 17th 2007 3:04PM
Simple management technique that IMO all guilds should use, that will help with this and many other issues:
No anonymous members. Period. The guild gets your real name or you don't get an invite.
Put their name in their note and be done with it. All alts get the same name.
Shiro May 17th 2007 3:23PM
My biggest problem is that I don't really have a "main". Thus my alts get tagged with "Alt of YYY" and no one has any idea of who YYY is. It's not until I log in with my currently most played character that they actually realize "Oh, YYY is actually ZZZ!".
Oh well, the only people who get really confused about this are the n00bs to the guild who weren't around when I was playing on YYY 8 hours a day. :)
I also have a few alts that aren't tagged as being my alt. That way I can watch whats going on without people knowing there is an officer around.
Sylthan May 17th 2007 4:13PM
Quote:
it's really helpful to know that that 23 mage on right now is actually a well-geared 70 warrior who can tank your instance.
-------------------------------------------------------
Ever think that "Well-geared 70 Warrior doesnt want to tank your or anyone else's instanced at that time? Perhaps thats WHY he or she is playing an Alt.
DontLetsStart May 17th 2007 5:40PM
Maybe that well geared 70 warrior is playing that alt precisely because he doesn't want to be bothered with requests to tank instances right now? ;)
rgoff31 May 17th 2007 8:15PM
Same as 1.
Very small guild and each rank is a RL name.
There aren't that many of us, but it was really
hard to remember all the alts before we did that.
Iroza May 18th 2007 1:19AM
Shame there aint anymore PALS addon :
http://www-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/addons/chat/pals/
It was the best one around not depending on other players.