MMOMaven Admin
12-05-2006, 06:28
In World of Warcraft it is undoubtabley certain that the most successful accounts are those that benefit from multiple higher level characters. While it is certainly possible to make enough money to be competitive in World of Warcraft with only one or two characters, it is far easier to complement the unique abilities of several. Throughout the history of Role Playing Games, players have assumed different roles by creating characters of different classes or races. These differences inevitably come with varied playing style, advantages or disadvantages in combat, or, in MMORPGs, unique advantages that are desired by the rest of the in game community. It is therefore impossible, or rather much more difficult, to be a wealthy "Jack of all trades" character in most RPG's because of the level and time requirements needed to do so. It is far easier to create a wealthy ACCOUNT by creating multiple/less powerful specialized characters than one character with whom you will invest all of your time playing. Okay, so now you're asking: What are the benefits of multiple characters? I have more fun just playing one character with which I am more closely tied.
The answer is rather simple: you only THINK that you like playing one character more. When you start becoming much wealthier, spending less of your time traveling across the map, spending less money buying HIGHLY DESIRED/NECESSARY items from other players, finding yourself seldom running out of bank/inventory space, finding yourself equipped with VERY DECENT armor crafted by another one of your characters, spending less time trying to sell 'difficult to sell' items on the AH or to players by trade (since it is highly likely that another of your characters can benefit from the item i.e. enchanter) you will realize that you have more fun with multiple characters.
DON'T PUT ALL OF YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!!!!!!
For starters, playing multiple characters keeps the game interesting. After about the 100,000,000th fire bolt fired at a murloc from the tips of your mages fingers, you will find it very boring playing as only one class for an extended duration of time. Instead you could merely log off, and pickpocket those murlocs before shoving a dagger down their throats... But lets be honest...this isn't the reason you were looking for....
Another advantage, again which you may have overlooked (or not really cared for) is the fact that by playing multiple classes you will subconciously learn the classes strategies. If you want to be successful AT ALL in PvP, you must KNOW THINE ENEMY...furthermore you must BE THINE ENEMY. If you know all of the skills and strategies that your opponent will use upon you, you will know how to counter him in advance. Playing as a rogue will teach you of the NECESSITY of the movement impairing CRIPPLING POISON in PvP. Yet when you are a Druid, you will be wise to activate your Poison immunity upon recognizing the "stealth sound" of an incoming rogue. Similarly, learning the kite strategies of the mage will teach you that if you want to best the mage you MUST break out of his movement impairing effects and interupt his spells.
Okay now for the economic benefits. First, why do you think that Blizzard created the profesion system in World of Warcraft so that you can only have 2 professions per character at any time? They don't want jucied lvl 60 "Jacks of all trades" emerging and DOMINATING the entire market with a single character. Furthermore, Blizzard is trying to create a dependent market: a community, where each member in some way depends on the other members. An enchanter needs LOTS of green items, a leatherworker needs skins to make products (and sometimes cloths or metals), etc. This dependence is good and bad for you. It means that when you sell items: DING! you have a huge market that depends on the items you sell and you will make money (supply and demand: only a specific profession can provide the supply, i.e. skins, but there is a high, constant, and DEPENDENT demand, i.e. leatherworkers who need your skin for $), unfortunately it also means that when you buy...boom, adios vacation funds. Other players aren't idiots, they know that in one way or another, the rest of the WoW server needs or could benefit from the item and the only thing keeping their prices in check are other characters with the same profession as them. But still, do the arithmetic: there are 9 specialization professions and each character can only choose 2, meaning that (assuming proportions to be somewhat equal---which they seldom are) you will be have the same profession as 1 of 4 characters. The chance that that character has access to the same recipes/materials as you and has the same skill in that profession are low. So while there is competition, there isn't enough competition to make a buyers life "not difficult". So how do you make money: you INCREASE your good export (sell more) and decrease your good import. This applies because mercantilist principles dictate that there is a limited amount of wealth in the world(which generally holds true in WoW). HOWEVER, there are TWO TYPES OF BUYERS, or rather, TWO TYPES OF DEBT: Good debt and Bad debt. Bad debt includes that beastly Breastplate of the Monkey (soulbound: very important) that you paid 10 gold for. After you advanced to level 50 you realized you needed a new chestpiece. So you sold the Brestplate to a vendor for 30 silver and overall you lost a crapload of money for a little extra defense...yes defense is necessary BUT ONLY TO THE POINT WHERE YOU ARE ABLE TO KILL ENEMIES AT OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE YOUR LEVEL: EXTRA DEFENSE IS OVERKILL...A WASTE OF MONEY FOR ANYTHING EXCEPT PvP (which you can wait to do until later) AND FOOLISH EGO FIGHTS (yeh those 6 on 1 fights you attempted as a paladin--> you would have accomplished just as much if you took them on 1 on 1 or 2 on 1 except you wouldn't have had to waste that potion, food or mana) so get by with what you need to and don't be seduced by the cool look of expensive items: you'll get them eventually. Now good debt is entirely different. When you bought those heavy leathers for 50s from the AH and made shoulderpads which you sold for 99 silver...you made a profit...duh. So obviously, what is a better buy in the long run, the heavy leather or the Breastplate of the Monkey?
So where does this all fit in with multiple characters? Well if you only devote your money and time to your profession, how will your character be strong enough to fight monsters at his own level without buying equiptment from the AH? The answer is...he won't. He will instead rely on another character of yours for armor and weapons (which won't be really good, but will be enough to fight enemies at your level easily). Remember the goal isn't to become completely self-sufficient, but rather more self-suficient when "buying goods"(buy less) and less self-suficient when selling goods (with a greater variety of items from different characters comes a greater amount of items sold) Rather than explaining this, I will give a large example of how to use multiple characters.
EXAMPLE:
(Remember that this is all done on ONE sever)
CREATE A DRUID: there are several advantages to starting with this class. First, it is the closest to the "Jack of all trades" and will familarize you with the general strategies and skills of most classes. Furthermore a druid in PvP doesn't need to have insane equiptment (in early levels of warsong gulch at least) since you will be flag running in travel form. The druid's travel form also speeds the game up alot. Getting to places quicker means more experience and more money (time is money). You also can hold out on buying a mount and save that money for the other characters you will create. The druids travel form also will make harvesting herbs and skins go by much quicker and will allow you to beat out the competition because of the sheer amount of herbs and skins you'll gather.
TAKE HERBALISM AND SKINNING: You cant mine in travel form, so take these two gathering professions and sell the goods at the AH...you'll make a ton of money really quick for a low lvl character.
LEVEL YOUR DRUID: Get to as high of a level as you want (i would try to hit at least level 30 to get travel form so that you can quickly harvest materials...I strongly suggest, however, that you don't buy alot of armor or weapons.
CREATE ANOTHER CHARACTER: I would create this character earlier rather than later and I also would highly suggest that he is a leather armor wearer. This character will;
TAKE LEATHERWORKING AND ALCHEMY: Once your druid starts really harvesting a ton of mats, you will want to ship them to this character to help level up these two professions. At higher levels, this character is going to be making the dough (a ton of money). The leather armor that he makes from the skins that the druid ships him will be used as his armor for most of the early levels. He can even make armor to mail to the druid if you want to continue advancing the druid. You will also gain the upper edge by utilizing the decent amount of money you obtained from the druid to fund awesome items if you are a PvP'er. Once your druid obtains enough money by selling the raw mats, start saving them and mailing them to this character to increase LW and ALCH. Use the Druid's money to purchase unique recipes. Eventually you will be tired of using your druid to harvest mats for this character so after you obtain alot of money from the druid and send the majority of it to this character, just simply start buying the materials that the unique recipes you have require, make the items, and the sell it on the AH. This process will make you alot of cash.
CREATE A STORAGE CHARACTER: A Human, preferably, because of the Reputation benefits and easy access to stormwind and ironforge. Just park this character near a mailbox and bank and ship abundant items from the other character for this character to sell in the AH or store in the bank for future prospect (i.e. if your rogue finds awesome plate or caster armor, or an incredible recipe ship it to this character to save it for another character). It is unbeleivable how much time the AH can waste if you factor in the time and money it take to travel to a main city and travel back to where you were before. Give this Auction House Character a good deal of money so that he can post auctions. When this character begins to accumulate alot of $, send it to the other characters. I PERSONALLY RECOMMEND that you store an ABUNDANT amount of green items that you accumulate from your other characters with this character for the sake of the enchanter that you may wish to create.
CREATE ANOTHER CHARACTER: (this step varies by preference...by this point you should have enough characters to be relatively self-suficient in terms of buying) It might be wise to make a tanker here (paladin or warrior) and take the professions of Blacksmithing and Minning. You can make weapons for you other characters as well as receive VERY HELPFUL armor patches from your leatherworker and healing and rage potions (among others). The potions and patches alone will make the need of insane armor much lower, and you can focus on mining and blacksmithing to make what armor and weapons you need, or that your characters need. Money for recipes and extra ore for blacksmithing isnt so much of an issue because of the amount of money you should have now accumulated from your other characters.
MAKE YET ANOTHER CHARACTER IF SO DESIRED: Remember all of those green, magic items you've been collecting in your storage character's bank. Well this character can really put them to use. I recommend taking ENCHANTING for this character, as it can be highly rewarding after leveled properly. Disenchant those green items to raise his enchanting skill high. Remember, you can make green items with your leatherworker or blacksmither and give them to your enchanter to help raise his level. Once this enchanter is good, start juicing all of you characters equiptment...you will begin to find it easy to fight mobs. Additionally you have two options for a second profession: TAILORING and ENGINEERING, both of which are good. If you choose tailoring, you should have a bunch of cloth from your other characters which you can use to make armor for a caster or make bags for everyone. If you don't have a caster, you don't like to play casters, you are a big bandager, you want to do the various cloth quests for reputation, or you see the fortune in merely selling cloth in the AH you will want to pursue ENGINEERING. ENGINEERING will give you a bunch of odd items that are very usefull (especially if you have a hunter). Just start buying recipes and ore, or send excess ore that you obtained from your blacksmither over to your engineer. The only problem with engineering is that many of the INSANE engineer items require an engineer to use them. So if you are planning on playing this character ALOT, I highly recommend engineering.
The Basic principle is to develop a circle of trade between your characters. While one level 60 is strong; economically, several level 30s and 40s are much stronger, and you will also have a much easier time leveling them, AND you will have plenty of cash. Don't forget: it take A LONNNGGG time to get from level 50 to 60, and you will alleviate much of that pain by making that leveling easier. You can best make that leveling easier by complementing your character's skills with the skill of other characters: you will end up with better items at the fraction of the price (and plenty of potions too) and plenty of cash. Always remember THE SUM OF THE PARTS IS GREATER THAN THE WHOLE...while any individual character is strong when in combat, the great characters are strong economically; and a group of characters working together is certainly greater than one juiced character, or several juiced character whose professions and skills don't complement one another.
Part 2 of this guide will reveal more specific tricks to the Character machine method that I have explained...coming soon....
The answer is rather simple: you only THINK that you like playing one character more. When you start becoming much wealthier, spending less of your time traveling across the map, spending less money buying HIGHLY DESIRED/NECESSARY items from other players, finding yourself seldom running out of bank/inventory space, finding yourself equipped with VERY DECENT armor crafted by another one of your characters, spending less time trying to sell 'difficult to sell' items on the AH or to players by trade (since it is highly likely that another of your characters can benefit from the item i.e. enchanter) you will realize that you have more fun with multiple characters.
DON'T PUT ALL OF YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!!!!!!
For starters, playing multiple characters keeps the game interesting. After about the 100,000,000th fire bolt fired at a murloc from the tips of your mages fingers, you will find it very boring playing as only one class for an extended duration of time. Instead you could merely log off, and pickpocket those murlocs before shoving a dagger down their throats... But lets be honest...this isn't the reason you were looking for....
Another advantage, again which you may have overlooked (or not really cared for) is the fact that by playing multiple classes you will subconciously learn the classes strategies. If you want to be successful AT ALL in PvP, you must KNOW THINE ENEMY...furthermore you must BE THINE ENEMY. If you know all of the skills and strategies that your opponent will use upon you, you will know how to counter him in advance. Playing as a rogue will teach you of the NECESSITY of the movement impairing CRIPPLING POISON in PvP. Yet when you are a Druid, you will be wise to activate your Poison immunity upon recognizing the "stealth sound" of an incoming rogue. Similarly, learning the kite strategies of the mage will teach you that if you want to best the mage you MUST break out of his movement impairing effects and interupt his spells.
Okay now for the economic benefits. First, why do you think that Blizzard created the profesion system in World of Warcraft so that you can only have 2 professions per character at any time? They don't want jucied lvl 60 "Jacks of all trades" emerging and DOMINATING the entire market with a single character. Furthermore, Blizzard is trying to create a dependent market: a community, where each member in some way depends on the other members. An enchanter needs LOTS of green items, a leatherworker needs skins to make products (and sometimes cloths or metals), etc. This dependence is good and bad for you. It means that when you sell items: DING! you have a huge market that depends on the items you sell and you will make money (supply and demand: only a specific profession can provide the supply, i.e. skins, but there is a high, constant, and DEPENDENT demand, i.e. leatherworkers who need your skin for $), unfortunately it also means that when you buy...boom, adios vacation funds. Other players aren't idiots, they know that in one way or another, the rest of the WoW server needs or could benefit from the item and the only thing keeping their prices in check are other characters with the same profession as them. But still, do the arithmetic: there are 9 specialization professions and each character can only choose 2, meaning that (assuming proportions to be somewhat equal---which they seldom are) you will be have the same profession as 1 of 4 characters. The chance that that character has access to the same recipes/materials as you and has the same skill in that profession are low. So while there is competition, there isn't enough competition to make a buyers life "not difficult". So how do you make money: you INCREASE your good export (sell more) and decrease your good import. This applies because mercantilist principles dictate that there is a limited amount of wealth in the world(which generally holds true in WoW). HOWEVER, there are TWO TYPES OF BUYERS, or rather, TWO TYPES OF DEBT: Good debt and Bad debt. Bad debt includes that beastly Breastplate of the Monkey (soulbound: very important) that you paid 10 gold for. After you advanced to level 50 you realized you needed a new chestpiece. So you sold the Brestplate to a vendor for 30 silver and overall you lost a crapload of money for a little extra defense...yes defense is necessary BUT ONLY TO THE POINT WHERE YOU ARE ABLE TO KILL ENEMIES AT OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE YOUR LEVEL: EXTRA DEFENSE IS OVERKILL...A WASTE OF MONEY FOR ANYTHING EXCEPT PvP (which you can wait to do until later) AND FOOLISH EGO FIGHTS (yeh those 6 on 1 fights you attempted as a paladin--> you would have accomplished just as much if you took them on 1 on 1 or 2 on 1 except you wouldn't have had to waste that potion, food or mana) so get by with what you need to and don't be seduced by the cool look of expensive items: you'll get them eventually. Now good debt is entirely different. When you bought those heavy leathers for 50s from the AH and made shoulderpads which you sold for 99 silver...you made a profit...duh. So obviously, what is a better buy in the long run, the heavy leather or the Breastplate of the Monkey?
So where does this all fit in with multiple characters? Well if you only devote your money and time to your profession, how will your character be strong enough to fight monsters at his own level without buying equiptment from the AH? The answer is...he won't. He will instead rely on another character of yours for armor and weapons (which won't be really good, but will be enough to fight enemies at your level easily). Remember the goal isn't to become completely self-sufficient, but rather more self-suficient when "buying goods"(buy less) and less self-suficient when selling goods (with a greater variety of items from different characters comes a greater amount of items sold) Rather than explaining this, I will give a large example of how to use multiple characters.
EXAMPLE:
(Remember that this is all done on ONE sever)
CREATE A DRUID: there are several advantages to starting with this class. First, it is the closest to the "Jack of all trades" and will familarize you with the general strategies and skills of most classes. Furthermore a druid in PvP doesn't need to have insane equiptment (in early levels of warsong gulch at least) since you will be flag running in travel form. The druid's travel form also speeds the game up alot. Getting to places quicker means more experience and more money (time is money). You also can hold out on buying a mount and save that money for the other characters you will create. The druids travel form also will make harvesting herbs and skins go by much quicker and will allow you to beat out the competition because of the sheer amount of herbs and skins you'll gather.
TAKE HERBALISM AND SKINNING: You cant mine in travel form, so take these two gathering professions and sell the goods at the AH...you'll make a ton of money really quick for a low lvl character.
LEVEL YOUR DRUID: Get to as high of a level as you want (i would try to hit at least level 30 to get travel form so that you can quickly harvest materials...I strongly suggest, however, that you don't buy alot of armor or weapons.
CREATE ANOTHER CHARACTER: I would create this character earlier rather than later and I also would highly suggest that he is a leather armor wearer. This character will;
TAKE LEATHERWORKING AND ALCHEMY: Once your druid starts really harvesting a ton of mats, you will want to ship them to this character to help level up these two professions. At higher levels, this character is going to be making the dough (a ton of money). The leather armor that he makes from the skins that the druid ships him will be used as his armor for most of the early levels. He can even make armor to mail to the druid if you want to continue advancing the druid. You will also gain the upper edge by utilizing the decent amount of money you obtained from the druid to fund awesome items if you are a PvP'er. Once your druid obtains enough money by selling the raw mats, start saving them and mailing them to this character to increase LW and ALCH. Use the Druid's money to purchase unique recipes. Eventually you will be tired of using your druid to harvest mats for this character so after you obtain alot of money from the druid and send the majority of it to this character, just simply start buying the materials that the unique recipes you have require, make the items, and the sell it on the AH. This process will make you alot of cash.
CREATE A STORAGE CHARACTER: A Human, preferably, because of the Reputation benefits and easy access to stormwind and ironforge. Just park this character near a mailbox and bank and ship abundant items from the other character for this character to sell in the AH or store in the bank for future prospect (i.e. if your rogue finds awesome plate or caster armor, or an incredible recipe ship it to this character to save it for another character). It is unbeleivable how much time the AH can waste if you factor in the time and money it take to travel to a main city and travel back to where you were before. Give this Auction House Character a good deal of money so that he can post auctions. When this character begins to accumulate alot of $, send it to the other characters. I PERSONALLY RECOMMEND that you store an ABUNDANT amount of green items that you accumulate from your other characters with this character for the sake of the enchanter that you may wish to create.
CREATE ANOTHER CHARACTER: (this step varies by preference...by this point you should have enough characters to be relatively self-suficient in terms of buying) It might be wise to make a tanker here (paladin or warrior) and take the professions of Blacksmithing and Minning. You can make weapons for you other characters as well as receive VERY HELPFUL armor patches from your leatherworker and healing and rage potions (among others). The potions and patches alone will make the need of insane armor much lower, and you can focus on mining and blacksmithing to make what armor and weapons you need, or that your characters need. Money for recipes and extra ore for blacksmithing isnt so much of an issue because of the amount of money you should have now accumulated from your other characters.
MAKE YET ANOTHER CHARACTER IF SO DESIRED: Remember all of those green, magic items you've been collecting in your storage character's bank. Well this character can really put them to use. I recommend taking ENCHANTING for this character, as it can be highly rewarding after leveled properly. Disenchant those green items to raise his enchanting skill high. Remember, you can make green items with your leatherworker or blacksmither and give them to your enchanter to help raise his level. Once this enchanter is good, start juicing all of you characters equiptment...you will begin to find it easy to fight mobs. Additionally you have two options for a second profession: TAILORING and ENGINEERING, both of which are good. If you choose tailoring, you should have a bunch of cloth from your other characters which you can use to make armor for a caster or make bags for everyone. If you don't have a caster, you don't like to play casters, you are a big bandager, you want to do the various cloth quests for reputation, or you see the fortune in merely selling cloth in the AH you will want to pursue ENGINEERING. ENGINEERING will give you a bunch of odd items that are very usefull (especially if you have a hunter). Just start buying recipes and ore, or send excess ore that you obtained from your blacksmither over to your engineer. The only problem with engineering is that many of the INSANE engineer items require an engineer to use them. So if you are planning on playing this character ALOT, I highly recommend engineering.
The Basic principle is to develop a circle of trade between your characters. While one level 60 is strong; economically, several level 30s and 40s are much stronger, and you will also have a much easier time leveling them, AND you will have plenty of cash. Don't forget: it take A LONNNGGG time to get from level 50 to 60, and you will alleviate much of that pain by making that leveling easier. You can best make that leveling easier by complementing your character's skills with the skill of other characters: you will end up with better items at the fraction of the price (and plenty of potions too) and plenty of cash. Always remember THE SUM OF THE PARTS IS GREATER THAN THE WHOLE...while any individual character is strong when in combat, the great characters are strong economically; and a group of characters working together is certainly greater than one juiced character, or several juiced character whose professions and skills don't complement one another.
Part 2 of this guide will reveal more specific tricks to the Character machine method that I have explained...coming soon....