In Dragonflight, a project I set out on towards the tail end of the expansion was to have a character of every single talent specialization in World of Warcraft leveled to the maximum of 70 at the time. I didn’t quite hit that goal prior to the current expansion, The War Within, dropping. But with the 20th Anniversary event in-game and the plethora of experience gain bonuses available already this early into the expansion (Darkmoon Faire, Warband bonuses, and both Hallow’s End and Pilgrim’s Bounty with their experience bonuses), I not only finished leveling 39 characters to the new cap of level 80, but I exceeded it by 3 (almost 4 as I write this). At this point in time, I have 5 max level Monks, 4 max level Paladins, 4 max level Druids, 3 of every other class except Demon Hunter (where I have two for the two specs), and I am less than one level away from a fourth max level Priest. 42 current level 80 characters, nearly 43.

Given that, today I wanted to shake off the writing cobwebs and discuss this process, the rationale, and how I felt pushing towards this, frankly, absurd goal.

The Joy of Competition

I tend to be reservedly competitive in my everyday life. I don’t try to define myself by how I do relative to other people, but in fun scenarios, I like knowing that I have some measure of skill and aptitude that is above-average. In WoW, I would say that when I’m not being self-deprecating, I’m an above average player and analyst of the game, and I do take some pride in knowing a lot about the game and being able to at least semi-effectively coach my raiders by having baseline knowledge and hands-on experience with all the specs and roles. I’ve played every role in a raid and every spec to at least some level of accomplishment – some less than others (I have some specs where the Legion Mage Tower sprints I did in 2018 are the last major amount of gameplay I gave to some of them!).

A part of that is also for writing here, where I make an effort to dig up data sources that give my analysis an edge of sorts. That’s how I came across tracking site Data For Azeroth, and on a whim this expansion, decided to log my play and keep my data semi-updated. When I did that in the middle of my alt push, I found something very funny out – I was in the top 100 players in the world for number of max level alts. As I write this, I am world 60th, US 19th, and realm first, both for the connected realm and for Cenarius US, my home, specifically. To be clear, I am very aware that this data is self-reports and not everyone takes it that seriously, so obviously my position on the charts is not an undisputed number of full truth and thus not worth being too invested into, but it is, admittedly, a fun side-game to play as I reach my gameplay goals which remain independent of it.

Once I plugged in my data and found myself as high as world 42nd on the max-level alt charts, it lit a fire under me to perhaps ascend into the top 25. At this point, I think I know that is a pipe-dream that I will never dedicate the time to, but I still continue to take some pride in being able to balance having a literal classic raid and then some worth of max level characters while still accomplishing most of my other goals for Season 1 of TWW (Keystone Master, Glory of the Delver, max Delve Journey progress, 20+ Renown per faction, almost done with AOTC, etc.). Being in competition for a world ranking on anything in WoW is a feeling I didn’t expect, and even given the caveats of opt-in tracking on DfA, I still found myself enamored with the prospect of chasing that as high as I could take it, and quite happy with the result of “competing” in this manner.

The Impact of a Meh Season One

For what its worth, while I have massively enjoyed The War Within, I also have to admit that I find Season 1 a bit dull and unengaging in some ways. Mythic Plus changes have made pushing higher keys feel less rewarding and harder to want to do, the raid isn’t something I’ve felt compelled to PUG or push harder than my standard weekly clears with my team, and I went very hard on Delves early for rewards and have found myself organically tapering off of them in a way because of that (albeit ramping up again to gear all these new level 80s!). That feeling of ennui, that sort of listlessness the season has inspired, has led me to finding alt gameplay a satisfying default way to engage with the game outside of scheduled raids or slowly pushing my main Priest towards KSM in Mythic Plus. If keys were popping off and fun like Season 3 of Dragonflight, I would 100% be pushing alts through Mythic Plus, even just a key a week per character, but it kinda isn’t and so here we are. Alt gameplay has filled the gap that some of Blizzard’s disappointing seasonal decisions have left for me and that is something I am glad for!

Speedrunning Is Awesome, and Here’s Why

Okay, I just wanted to use the Hbomberguy video title as an intro (no plagiarism intended!). I’ve been engaging more with the speed leveling side of the WoW community, using crafted routes and strategies to level instead of just winging it or chain queueing dungeons, and that’s been kind of fun. Tracking my progress run to run and seeing how I improve as I go is great motivation and trying to really optimize my runs through the levels has made it more engaging. WoW has a vibrant speedrun community full of people who publish guides and full run videos showing how quickly they can sprint 70-80, 10-70, even 1-80, and doing those kind of routes and strategies has given me a new appreciation for a side of the game I genuinely used to hate (I only ever even had one of each class at max level because I self-recruited through Recruit a Friend and then dual boxed my way to six WoW accounts, 5 of which remain dead to this day lol). Leveling still isn’t the pinnacle of WoW content in my eyes, but making it into something I can optimize and really think about is pretty neat!

Rounding Out Collections

I wanted to do this project in large part as a means of collecting all the available goodies I could for it. I wanted to ensure I had at least one character per race at max level so I could get Heritage armor, do race-specific questlines, and generally have some experience in how all the racials interact with class and spec kits and what contexts they’re useful in (which right now doesn’t mean much, although Blizzard is buffing a lot of racials in the coming patch). With all of these complete (plus my extra Paladin who was my Earthen character once I unlocked that race), I have access to all racial-locked items in the game at last, which is pretty cool! On top of that however is another benefit, which is tier appearances. In the current game, some tier appearances are only available via the Catalyst, meaning that you can only really get them, especially in off slots like bracers, boots, belts, and capes, by getting a piece you can wear in that slot and then transforming it. The Catalyst is primarily a power catchup intended for main bonus-granting slots, so on main characters I play more regularly, it feels bad to use Catalyst charges on appearances. However, on my third character of a given class who I’ll likely only play in world content sparingly, it makes a ton of sense to get armor in those appearance slots and catalyze up for them to round out my collections. So that’s what I’ve done!

On top of all of that, more max level characters means more access to easy solo farming weekly, more ability to run mount farms, transmog farms, and to play current-expansion content for more appearances and achievements in the moment.

Knowledge Is Power

As a raid leader, one thing I always try to do in order to make myself sharper at the job is to understand what most of my raiders play at a basic level as a minimum. Having every class at max level let me do that most of the time, but now I have supreme flexibility to play a character who can be built and tailored to that role, spec, stat mix, and overall setup, and that lets me see and understand more of what they might experience. Its a valuable tool for me to have and something that I like to do as a result, and with this current alt setup, I can do that more easily than ever before!

The Full WoW Experience

I’ve mostly been an Alliance and Night Elf player in my WoW tenure, so leveling like this gave me a chance to try more Horde quests, more expansion content and storylines I hadn’t seen before, and to generally come to appreciate the details of the game from a new lens. Despite having played WoW for 19 of its 20 years of existence in the public, I have large swathes of the game I have never tried before, and seeing them this way was pleasant and enjoyable for me. Speaking of…

Putting The War (Mode) In Warcraft

Leveling in War Mode is undeniably faster due to the experience and rewards buff, and so it has been something I’ve done a lot more of now than ever before. Somewhat surprisingly, War Mode is actually not that hostile – sure, occasionally you’ll get blitzed by the opposing faction or challenge a world quest in a free-for-all area and get stomped on, but a lot of times I see opposing faction players in the world, we just skip right past each other. It, like playing Classic Hardcore, has given me a new perspective on the game, because I can play mostly the same but there’s this added danger and awareness I have to have which transforms a lot of the experience for me. In addition to experience bonuses though, I like leveling in War Mode and doing world quests with it for Bloody Tokens, which make a big part of the level 80 process much easier…

Caught Up In Time for Catchup

While I’ve been making every effort to use multiple gearing mechanisms on these alts, including the item level 593 War Mode gear, Resonance Crystal epic gear, and saving meta quests for reward caches, a big push to gear my new alts is likely to happen in under two weeks when patch 11.0.7 drops and Siren Isle introduces item level 584 warbound catchup gear. A big part of my goal in TWW was to be mostly done with alts by then explicitly so I could gear up and finish season 1 strong, then have my pick of specs to play deeper in Season 2, and here I am!

In Closing

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed using alt leveling as my own method to find the fun in TWW given that I’ve largely wound down for the first season. Blizzard’s focused QoL changes through the Warband system have made alt gameplay far easier and more engaging than ever before, and I’ve really keenly felt that improvement with each alt that hits level cap and immediately can be made viable to play in most endgame content. With this mostly done, I can turn attention to new goals and getting ready for Season 2 and I am excited to see what opportunities this opens up for me to enjoy the game in new and different ways.