I’ve been feeling a little silly lately since I feel like I don’t have much to blog about. Not to say that I’m not enjoying myself in game, but really, I figure who really wants to hear about me ramble about dailies, alts, and the occasional heroic?
(Though if you do want to hear me ramble about that stuff for some reason, lemme know =P)
Fortunately I may have found something of interest to talk about: namely, yesterday I decided to splurge and I got myself a second WoW account and Recruit-a-Friend. The whole set up + upgrading to WotLK + transferring a “test alt” over there was kind of pricy, but I allow myself to splurge a little every six months or so to keep me from going completely nuts about watching 95% of my income go to bills and food, so this was my splurge this time. /nod
Also, this is the graphic Blizz displays as an Easter Egg on the “Upgrade-to-WotLK” page:
For great justice.
Anyways, I haven’t had much of a chance to play around with my new second account yet, other than discovering I can’t invite my alt back to my little personal Horde Guild (I think maybe you have to have had an account for a few days or something before it will let you join a guild?) I have also decided the way battle.net handles more than one WoW account is pretty nifty. You just log in with one overriding account and then you choose which account you want to log into before you get to the character selection screen.
But yeah, looking forward to messing around with it after work today. To tell the truth I have no major overriding plan for what I want to do with a second account. I have little interest in the zebra mount, and no real alt plans for Recruit-a-Friend (other than satiating my morbid curiosity about just how fast the 3x experience + herilooms + rested goes…) and seeing as what I’m most excited about is being able to do things like get myself into raid groups for solo’ing stuff, or being able to invite myself to alt guilds (things that I was able to utilize the boyfriend for until his account expired >.>) I’m actually not sure it will be worth the extra $15/month in the end. But we’ll see how it goes– I’m pretty sure I’m creative enough to come up with something interesting– and if it isn’t as fun as I was expecting, it’ll be easy to just cancel that subscription and go back to one!
*nod*
The 3x XP doesn’t stack with rested and/or heirlooms, same as heirlooms don’t stack with rested, sadly 🙁
I did the RAF thing to setup the secondary account to transfer my 70 Shaman to. I regret doing it BEFORE I put some heirloom gear in the bank, but such is life.
Resto Shaman following a low level alt providing a never ending stream of Earth Shield is a nice thing to have. 😉
Oh, I love RAF… I’ve done it three, yes… three times. One with a real person, one failed attempt at multi-boxing on 2 computers and this latest one with one computer and multiple windows running WoW. I use a (completely legal) program called ‘Keyclone’ to map both accounts to the same keys. There’s nothing like two little gnome mages blasting mobs to pieces! ^_^
@Trizophenie — Are you sure the RAF and Heirlooms don’t stack? In my latest duo my priest wearing the Heirloom chest and shoulders regularly got more XP per kill and quest than my warlock on the RAF account with none.
I can see a use in xfering items between alliance and horde characters, using the neutral AH.
@Triz : As far as I was aware, heirlooms -did- stack with rested. In fact, let me just test that now…
Or, I would, if, y’know, EU login servers weren’t still borked. Gutted.
Just want to asure you, that people read your blog even when not always commenting. Your blog was the first in the wowverse that made me actually stop and read. And I do check it every day to see if you’ve an update. So please do post your ramblings. 🙂
RaF is awesome, you can level so, so fast. Mine ran out before I could do the Balance Druid Duo on SoE. 🙁
That Easter Egg… I think it’s from Dr. McNinja, or something.
I don’t know if it’s really rambling, but if you want to say it, I’d like to hear it. I have a lot of WoW blogs on my feed reader, but yours is one of the few that I read every word, from beginning to end.
RAF and heirloom shoulders do stack (I caught my druid up to the priest using them).
Leveling two at once is a lot of fun, and wow, do you get to feel op. It’s also a good way to get classes that you get stuck on (stupid clothies for me) past the ick levels and into the fun ones.
Multi box! Make 2 DPS classes of the exact same class, build, hotkeys, glyphs, etc. then pwn stuffs in BG. Or if you can get them to 80 and somehow get into a raid while multiboxing, that would be an extremely interesting post.
Imagine multiboxing 4 mages and then using mirror image and all of sudden there’s 16 mages!! That would be so funny to pull in a BG.
Or better yet multi boxing 4 hunters and then using Bestial Wrath all at once. /rawr -> faceroll -> win.
I did the RAF thing a few months ago (totally as intended… I actually recruited a friend and we actually leveled together). The 3x exp is crazy! So crazy, in fact, that you cannot remain geared in any capacity due to leveling so fast, so don’t even try.
If I remember correctly, I think it took us around 20-22 hrs of play time to get his 1st 60. We actually did it a little slowpaced on the 1st 1-60 run-through… we gathered FPs and quested for about 30-45 mins per zone, saw the world, and did most of my favorite questlines for the hell of it (“Are we there Yeti?”).
NOTE: Rep turn-ins that grant exp like faction cloth turn-ins and Argent Dawn turn-ins give GOBS OF EXP for what is probably bank clutter on your bank alt.
Of course the boring (but much more effective way) to power level another toon is to drag it behind you while you grind vanilla dungeons without mercy. A friend of mine was averaging about 16 hrs per 60 that way… he now has at least a 60 of every class because of it.
And finally, don’t forget that every 2 levels on the new account is worth 1 level on yours. My wife drafted a friend too and went from 1 to 50 in under an hour (after all of the level-granting action). She ended up with a level 50 bank-alt with no spells and starting gear for months afterwards.
Please, ramble away Pike! You’ve got a unique voice in this game (and it’s nice knowing that I’m not a lone rambler)! I check AofH daily as well, and if too much time goes by without hearing from you… well, I start to worry about you….
omg! did the boss maker her stop playing?
did one of the critters she works with do her in?
has she lost all sanity playing two accounts?
and such and such.
To add another toon to the guild, you still have to be on at the same time even with raf
@ Mithe, Albyll, Llyrra – Aww! You all make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. You commenters are too good for me! <3
@ clra2 - I'm not sure if I'd actually want to multibox, it was never really something that appealed to me. Although, I do like the idea of having a healbot following me around to provide buffs and get me out of any tight scrapes, but I think it'd be... much more focused on one of the two characters.
@ Kyle - Indeed, I was definitely doing that, I still couldn't join the guild though. Told me I "didn't have permission".
Please do continue to post your ramblings. We enjoy them 🙂
@clra2 – ER has a Shaman on the Horde side that’s a 6box setup (one main, 5 clones to copy results) and he does ok, until he gets near a Prot warrior on the ball. 😉 6x Chain Lightning reflected back is quite painful when you’re THAT clustered… heh
Hello Pike,
I’ve read your blog for some time now, but this is my first comment. Please go to dual-boxing.com – there are several really good articles that will help you get the most out of your RAF time. It is so easy to 2-box with some awesome free software. If you are only using one computer hotkeynet and jamba are FTW! I 3-box across three computers using just those two and Input Director (another free program that lets me use one mouse and keyboard arcoss the computers).
While I’m commenting, I’d like to thank you for all the informative and entertaining articles!
Elune be with you!
check dual-boxing.com, give multiboxing a try. or email me and ill walk u through it
I used RaF to get a second account, and am now duoing 2 hunters. It’s a blast, although I don’t use any programs for it. I switch between game screens and do it all manually. It really is easier if you have 2 computers (or at least 2 monitors).
I’m also leveling a priest by dragging her thru instances. I actually transferred my level 80 DK to the second account just for that reason. >.>
For the folks recommending DualBoxing… keep in mind that Pike is on Linux. 😉 Most of the multi-box stuff I’ve seen has been Win32 and might not hold up under WINE… 😐
@ Darand and Helmer – I truly appreciate the advice; I must admit though, I am not particularly interested in doing much multiboxing (beyond a the traditional “run-through”) and as Indigo Haze said, I am not sure about how well those programs would play with Linux/Wine anyhow! But thanks for the info anyway!