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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsAsk WoW Insider: Defining mains and alts
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 18th 2008 at 5:00PM
There's a ton of asking going on around this site lately -- between "Ask a Lore Nerd" and "Ask a Beta Tester," you guys are asking more questions than a two-year old who just learned what "why" means. But this column, Ask WoW Insider, is the O.G. of Ask columns here on the site, and unlike all of the other Ask columns, we put the question back to you readers. Chippen of EU Doomhammer sent in this great question this week:We are having a discussion in our guild whether alts have priority on loot before guild members and we do have different views on this. Some say that an alt is an alt, and need to wait to be geared up, while others can't really see the problem. What is a main and what is an alt?If you're asking me, I'd say it's definitely possible to switch mains (I've done it a few times) -- your main is currently the character that's getting the majority of your playtime, and the one where loot matters the most to you. Some guilds ask you to declare a main, so that they can make a clear distinction for passing out loot, while other guilds just have players switch alts depending only on what situations require what.
I suppose a main is the...well...I don't know. The first character I created? Or is it the character I play the most? Or is it the character I want to play the most and also enjoying playing the most? When does an alt become a main, and is it possible to swap between the two?
So let's show up those other Ask columns and give this great, open-ended question out to you, our dear readers: what is a main and what is an alt? And what's the difference between the two?
If you've got a question for our readers to be posted right here in the original Ask column, be sure to send it along to ask@wow.com. And there's lots more Ask WoW Insider, including this question on abusing the /roll, and how to make friends and influence raiders on a new server.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Guilds, Ask WoW Insider, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Kiukiu Aug 19th 2008 8:15AM
Personally, I have a Raid Main and a PvP Main...but this distinction is more a matter of circumstance than anything (one is on a server with numerous people I know and like, so I raid with them...whereas the other is on a server with few people I know, so I just use it to screw around and PvP/Arena with).
To my mind, it is only fair that someone you have specifically asked and convinced to serve a given purpose the chance to get gear for their main spec. For example, say I'm on my lolret pally and raiding TK or SSC or some such...but only because I am helping out by respeccing to trash tank because nobody else was available to do it.
Some random leet melee DPS item drops and I want it, naturally, since I would've been there in my regular capacity to request it. I am not needing on tank stuff (because I do not want it or intend to tank normally, I just do it to help the guild)...but will accept it if nobody else at all wants it (to better fill this duty in the future if needed). Think I'm going to get it? Not a chance...because it is now suddenly regulated as "off spec" and considered lower than the fury warrior or rogue that is present.
Think I want to raid in that environment? Not a chance. I consider it unfair and pointless to treat someone doing you a favour worse than if they told you to shove it and went normally (or got someone else to do it). Thus, I do not raid on that server.
I feel people who use alts are in the same boat, just using another toon in place of a respec. You shouldn't, however, be greedy and try to 'overgear' your alts. If your healbot is just gearing in Kara and badges and through some insanity you end up in the Black Temple and a godly healing item drops...do you think you need it more than a healer that does that regularly, even if you're helping your guild out in a pinch? I think people in this extreme case should put the guild before themselves and pass on it.
For the actual distinction of Main and Alt...well...if your toon is in a raiding guild and raids regularly enough to be an effective member of said raids, that makes them a Main. Is having 5 of them hurting other people? Possibly...if they are 5 out of 30 people and all are getting gear in every single raid. If they are 5 out of 150 and getting the odd bit of gear here and there...then no. It might be annoying to someone trying to gear, but that's when you say -as you should to your guildies- "hey man, do you mind just letting me have it because it's a serious upgrade and will help me out a lot?". If you cannot ask that (or cringe when someone legitimately asks you), then your guild is overly competitive for loot rather than the joy of raiding (and thus fails as a raiding guild).
Kothmia Aug 19th 2008 9:24AM
In our guild, which is pretty casual as far as raiding goes, we try to make two distinctions when it comes to who gets what loot.
1 - Main spec/primary toon. Several of us have multiple 70s that we'll bring if needed. My main is my holy pally. Mostly because we usually need heals. If tank gear drops, and none of our tanks need it, then the dps warriors/non-tankadin pallys can pick it up. Personally, if the guild has asked you to bring a particular alt, I'm OK with letting you pick up gear with that alt. (Cause let's face it, if we needed them once, we'll prolly need them again.) Again, it goes to primary role first. If you're in as a healer, and you want to roll on dmg gear, and there's a mage that needs it... no. sorry. no gear for you.
2 - secondary toons that you bring cause you're bored. If you normally fill a dps role, and you bring a different dps toon, I'm not inclined to let you roll on gear. I've got a mage that'll come and help out if we've got enough healers/tanks. I will ALWAYS pass on gear if one of our regular raiders is in there. I don't want to see loot diluted among a large number of alts if I can avoid it. Now, if you've been running with us on a dps, and you've rolled a healer, and you'd rather start running with the healer... all the better, and you'll probably get a spot, and you'll probably get gear. But if you've been a healer and roll a hunter... I wouldn't hold my breath.
But, all in all, for the most part, we try to work things out on who's got what toons to fill what spots. And then we usually work on gearing them up as needed. Our warrior who respecced tank can still roll on dps gear, because that's his primary role. Personally, if tank gear drops while he's there and he needs it, if he wants it, I'll let him have it. But I throw it out there for everyone to discuss.
Yay for being relatively small. :D
Shiro Aug 19th 2008 9:41AM
OK, I love, love, love this question. It really brings to light what different kinds of guilds are out there and how they define things like alts and mains.
1st up: This is a guild by guild distinction. I've been in progression guilds both pre and post BC. Each and every guild I've ever been in has treated this issue differently. They've all progressed and some of them where I was like "no way will this work" have progressed the fastest.
The only way you can define this is to ask your guild leaders how they define it. Then you'll know what your own personal guild thinks.
2nd point: Why should you let an established raider who has their main geared out ever run with an alt?
I'll answer that one. We had in an older guild that I was an officer for, a person who gave us the ultimatum. "I've been raiding for 2 years now on my "main" who is a healing paladin. I'm burned out, I need a break. I've been leveling a Mage for DPS and I love it. You guys have two choices. Either I put my mage in a different guild and raid with her there, or I can change my main to a mage here and raid with her with you guys." This was a guy who hadn't missed a raid in years. What do you do? Say "no" to him. Tell him to find another guild to raid with so he can gear up his new mage? Of course not. You say "OK, we really want you around, stay with us, we'll let you gear up your new mage".
Here's where it gets tricky. Now you've got three or four other people in the raid who want to do the same thing, once they see it happen for him. Now all your hardcore raiders no longer want to bring their mains on farm content. Uh Oh, problem city dead ahead.
3rd point: How can it work *for* you. A different guild I was in had a very different problem. They were "progress at all costs". They made everyone choose a main, and you *had* to raid on your main. No alts, ever. If you did bring an alt, and there was gear that was about to be sharded, then maybe you'd get it if we didn't need any enchanting mats, but you paid DKP on your main, and your alt went on lockdown where they couldn't get any loot for a decent amount of time.
What happened here? Well, we had a tanking trio who tanked *everything* for us. They were the mains, they showed up every night, and we focused on gearing them up and having them learn every fight. Things progressed rapidly. Our healers on the other hand weren't as good about showing up to farm runs. Thus, the DPS didn't gear up very fast (priority drops to healers and tanks made it take longer for them). We recruited more healers, which helped for a time... But, you can see that with a larger pool of healers it took longer to gear them all. Meanwhile our tanks were getting impatient. Progress slowed, and all three got poached by guilds further in progress within the space of 2 weeks.
Now your guild has *NO* tanks, no one who has ever tanked anything, even farm content, and no one even close to being geared.
Another guild I was in allowed alts, and as such when a tank left, no big deal. They had a ton of decently geared tanks willing to fill the spots and most of them had tanked in farm content and even some in progression content to fill spots when the tanks wanted a night off.
The guild with the tanks who left folded within a month of them leaving.
Point 4: The moral.
You can do what you want with your guild.
If you recruit enough people and have a tanking rotation, and a healing rotation, and enough DPS, hey good for you. You can mandate mains and alts.
If you "lay down the law" and keep alts out of raids, then you have a mass exodus of one particular class, you can look forward to your guild folding like a house of cards. Sometimes it's that guy with 8 level 70s (like me) who has them all geared and can be either DPS, Tank or Healer on any given run who is the one that can hold your guild together while you recruit. All you need to do is to throw him the occasional bone.
Beli Aug 19th 2008 2:04PM
This discussion really seems to come down to 2 separate questions: How do you define a main, and what type of guild are you?
In typical fashion, we'll answer the second question first :) There are really 3 types of guilds out there: "hard core" progression raiding guilds, "casual" raiding guilds, and non-raiding guilds. Depending on how you see your guild and the situation your guild finds itself in, the loot rules could be very different. Note that i'm not concerning myself with loot systems, DKP, etc - these are generic comments on loot distribution above and beyond traditional systems.
For progression guilds, it's important to have a main declared for each of your 25 raiders, and those mains will get priority. Now, you might lose a player and have to consider some swapping - say you lose a healer, and one of your DPS starts taking an alt as a healer because you had another DPS sitting on the bench waiting to play. That healer alt, which is filling a priority role for you now, should get priority (short term) over mains because the gear will most likely help his ungeared butt the most.
For casual raiding guilds, things are a little fuzzier, and it's probably here that most of the problems arise. These guilds usually won't ask people to define a main character. Since they aren't terribly worried about progression, there's no big push to get everyone geared up evenly. And most likely they have a range of geared people - Some may be completely decked out in everything they could get from the instances you're raiding, others may still be in leveling greens/blues. However you want to do the loot rules in this type of guild, the important thing is that you state the rules and make sure everyone knows them - you can't please everyone (as you've seen in this thread) and trying to do so will only ensure that you please no one.
For the non-raiding guilds, i don't really think this is an issue :)
Now for the first question, how to define a main. Again, this differs depending on guild type. Progression guilds will have well defined mains - the characters that are best geared and go on the progression runs. Casual guilds, once again, are a little more gray... Your main could be the character people know you as - you might be on another toon, but in guild chat they'll still call you by your "mains" name. Your main might be whoever you've decided to raid with this month. Your main might be whoever you're spending the most time with. Since progression isn't an issue, gear level or time played on a toon isn't really important. So long as the guild decides how to define this in their loot rules clearly and concisely, you'll do fine. Again, try to please everyone and you'll end up pleasing no one. Finally, for non-raiding guilds, what does it matter? Just be happy you managed to convince someone to switch from their DPS character to their tanking character so you can actually go on that run!
Jason Aug 22nd 2008 12:26AM
In our guild main's always get priority. How a main is determined is it is the character that players spend most of their time raiding with, the one that is geared for our current progression fights.
If there is a need for a certain class in the guild (for us it was healers) a player can switch mains, but to be considered a main for gear distribution, this change has to be approved by the officers.
Some players have 2-3 "mains" that they try and get gear for, but only one of those is considered a main when it comes to loot distribution. The others, especially if they are a class/spec that is needed will get priority over alts and off-spec, but if there is another player there on their main that could use the item as an upgrade, that main will get the piece, all things being equal.
We use a loot council system, so a lot of things are considered besides who it would be the biggest upgrade for.
CyberThoth Aug 19th 2008 10:22PM
I always find this very interesting with guildies who have more then one level 70 character (I only have one 70 at this point). Our rules imply that mains should be given priority to loot over alts. However, when a person runs an alt because it's a role that must be filled in during that particular run, and that person a lot of times does that, shouldn't that person have equal chance on the loot for the character since that person gets to run that alt so many times, many times at the insistence of the guild.
Example, I got my main lock and an alt priest, but a lot of time my guild will ask for my healer, rather my dps to join on a raid because not enough healers. In that case I should have full roll privelages for healing loot since my alt character is needed by the guild.
Rumi Aug 19th 2008 3:38PM
I've switched main 1 time when BC came and will prolly do it again with when wrath hits. I played mage pre-bc and raided ZG and MC and my druid was just a lvl 10 alt i played when our server was down. Now hes my t6 kitted resto main and my mage is soon to be 69. When the mage hits 70 ill prolly level a horde toon so ill get another dk in wrath.
Calybos Aug 20th 2008 5:56PM
I don't have a main; I rotate among all my various characters as the mood strikes me. If my guild ever insisted I define a "main" and stick with it, I'd quit the guild.
Raiding? Progression? Couldn't care less. That's not what I'm playing for.
LostOne Aug 19th 2008 3:33PM
I'm wondering about the Ferocity talent tree for pets. Is the Heart of the Phoenix ability a random proc ability or it is an activated ability with a cooldown? Also, on the Tenacity tree, the Guard Dog ability says "Your pet's Growl generates 20% additional threat and 10% of its total happiness." I don't understand the wording relating to the happiness, can you explain how that figures in?
Tenchan Aug 20th 2008 3:23AM
I have two mains. Frank as that. A DPS and a Tank. I focus on them the same, I love them the same, I use them the same amount. If WoW forced me to only have 1 char, I'd rather delete them both and make a new one. I'm also an RPer, whose game time and focus hinge on more things than just raid progression. (In fact, they tend to hinge on about everything else.)
My raiding alliance does require its members to declare one main, but fortunately only on Progression runs. I can live with that.
ZekeGrimsblade Aug 21st 2008 2:21AM
Ok, I don't intend to have multiple 70's uber geared. I just want one 70 that I can do things with and feel like a non Newb 70. I also want a few other 70's so I can know the limits, talents and hardships of other players. Reading about other classes is great and all, but in the end, doesn't really show you their pain.
But anyway, someone said something about a Guildmate, deciding today, I want to bring my Alt, a Mage. Normally, they are a Druid Boomkin, I think was the term. Fair enough. But what If normally, I play DPS/CC, and the Guild needs me to bring my alt, a Paladin on for healing. Does that mean that I can't roll on something that would help my +healing? Especially if I am helping my guild, and not just once, then that would be the guild spiting itself by cutting off it's own nose. Just my oppinion, and not worth much, but that's the way I see it.
ella Aug 21st 2008 11:43PM
I think in a raiding situation, if you are part of a ragular group, you're main is the toon specifically within that raid group. If i have my hunter in Kara group 1, that is my main toon for that group. i accept only hunter loot when needed. If i have my priest in Kara group 2, my priest is my main toon and accepts only priest loot, no hunter.
Again the idea of main toon changes within a soley guild chat/PVE situation. My main is the character i am know and called by other players. I have the same name for my 3 high level toons (Elladia, Ellaedia,Elladea) so i get called Ella....so how do i define my main in that situation? I tell people that it is my first made toon, my highest equipt toon, the one i have played to longest on..my hunter.
I think the main and alt category primarily affects the raiding situation as in the game environment, doing quests and instances rewards are based on what toon is playing at the time.