During  my regular WoW playtime this weekend and paying attention to what is coming down the pipeline in Legion patches I realized that Blizzard has been doing an awful lot to ease-in playing alt characters. Make no mistake about it – there is a TON to do with just one character alone – more than most could ever accomplish if they truly wanted to do “everything” WoW has to offer. Still, this alt-realization hit me when doing the Weekly quest on my Paladin (alt). First off, the weekly quest was “time walking” Wrath of The Lich King 5 mans, which is a whole lot of love for me.  WOTLK was one of my favourite expansions, I was still involved in the end game – raiding – at the time, and 5 mans are still my favourite MMO activity. So much win in one event for me. Bonus to this happiness is that it drops gear around the 830 item level, and my 820 (ish) Paladin could use pretty much all upgrades.
Before embarking on the time walking dungeons I did my daily Emissary Cache quest – and got a legendary item. WoW recently buffed all new legendary items to drop at item level 940. Originally they dropped at 895 and then got a free boost to 910. My Druid has three of those. In order to get your old legendary items up to 940 you have to run a quest that, with my play time/style, will take 2-3 weeks per legendary – so I am a few months away from upgrading those items on my main. In comparison, my Druid who has done all current quest content, LFR Emerald Nightmare, LFR Trial of Valor, Mythics weekly (up to +6), Emissary Quest daily, Weekly quest weekly (basically, all non-raiding content available) sits at an 872 item level and gets another single digit on progress every week or two. I have played a lot of good old Couchon and it has been a blast.
After my Paladin got her first Legendary item and did the Weekly quest which granted an 885 belt as the Nighthold (newest raid, not open for LFR yet) chest as the reward, she jumped from 820ish to 852 (including other drops from the instances). Heck, she had 790 shoulders until yesterday. Also, with the Artifact Knowledge catch up mechanic her main weapon is almost with full traits. – something that Couchon just accomplished himself after months of work playtime.
It dawned on me after all of this that there is a real good possibility that if I play Couchon and Isee equally that Isee will surpass him in item level due to the new mechanics and available drops that are now in game. Couchon needs to catch up on his legendary growth and the odds are the Paladin will get a second before that happens. None of this couldn’t have been accomplished if I didn’t have a max-content character to begin with but it did make me realize that getting alts up to speed for current content is much easier than I expected. Keeping them current is probably going to be the real slog. Item level isn’t everything but I do enjoy progressing – this is a part of MMOs that I enjoy. Whether it is through story content, leveling, PVP or gear as long as I am moving forward I get satisfaction from the game.
I don’t remember this being the case in WoW in the past but it definitely is keeping me enthusiastic to keep playing and building up my stable of characters in the game.