Why Don't I Play more Characters in Video Games?

I've been asked this question periodically in MMOs by a variety of people, especially when we need someone like a tank or healer in a group format, and I've typically waved the question off with a "I just like playing Mages". 

Of course, when I started playing WoW back in 2009, the answer would have been that I just liked playing Paladins --I think I have three in Retail at this point in time*-- but by the time I quit playing Retail in 2014 I'd switched to playing Rogues. That style of toon persisted through Age of Conan, Elder Scrolls Online, and into my early forays into Classic WoW, but I have since returned to being primarily a Mage or Mage-like player and I don't deviate from that very much at all.

If you'd have given me the opportunity to play an Elemental Shaman in TBC Classic --and I did request that-- I would have likely continued playing that Shaman a lot longer. After all, of the three specs a Shaman has, Elemental is the DPS caster type**, the most Mage-like of the Shaman specs.

But when I hear about people who, to get ready for a new expansion to whatever MMO they're playing, plot out the leveling and preparation process for all of their toons, I simply don't grok that. If you like that, great, but to me that looks too much like work. 

From this WoW Forum thread.
From Imgur too.

***

Maybe it's because I simply don't love these games as much as other people do.

Me: We've discussed this already, Card.
I'm not saying I dislike you.

My reasoning for that conclusion stems from my deck work.

In order to figure out how to renovate the deck, I had to do quite a bit of research to make sure that not only could I accomplish this task, but the order in which I was going to accomplish it. As my kids have pointed out to me on numerous occasions, I do love to research a topic when I'm going to do something. 

On Friday, I was at the auto dealer while our old '97 Accord was getting regular maintenance taken care of***, and I was writing out what steps I need to perform to complete the deck renovation sometime next year. After that was finished, I began jotting down other projects that I'll be working on the next few years --there are quite a few-- since the kids have left the house and I don't have to worry about waking them up in the morning while I'm working. Before I finished, I'd already plotted out a basic timeline and potential costs and pitfalls before judging the priority of each project.

So why do I research projects such as these, I thought suddenly, but I refuse to do so for video games? 

Well, that one's kind of easy: I'd rather figure that out myself since, by and large, whether I fail or succeed at a video game won't directly affect my life. 

But screwing up a deck rebuild just might, especially if it collapses while I'm standing on it.

That's fair, I decided as I left the dealership. Despite the opinions of a certain subset of gamers, games don't rise to the level of seriousness found when you're doing repairs or a project around the house. If you've ever had to pay a plumber to show up and fix your fuck-up, you know what I mean.

By extension, if I like playing MMOs, why don't I do more than play one or two toons?**** I just play pretty much one character in a type of game that encourages multiple playthroughs with different types of characters, so why don't I follow along?

Looking back on my game playing, once you get beyond my stand by games such as Sid Meier's Civ series, some of the Total War games, and some other city or civ builder games, I really pretty much stick to a couple of characters. The only real exceptions to this are Stardew Valley and SWTOR; the former you could argue doesn't rise to the story level of a BG3 or World of Warcraft, and the latter I did play through (almost) each class once just to see all of the stories.

(Confession time here: I never finished the Imperial Agent's story in SWTOR; I'm at the end of Taris as far as the story goes, and I kind of left it at that and haven't been back since. So... 8-10 years, maybe? Then again, the reason why I don't play SWTOR much at all has to do with the broken companion pathing, and since that hasn't been fixed in at least 5 years I doubt it will ever get fixed.)

***

The funny thing is, I don't feel like I'm not enthusiastic about video games, it's just... Well, if everybody does it, why should I do it? 

It's not as if I haven't leveled new characters before. I went through the stage of starting a new toon for each new expansion in WoW, and I quickly discovered that if I wanted to examine content solo, that was the way to go. By the time the two toons I was leveling in Cataclysm reached their first L80-81 zones, they were mostly empty. And Mists... Well, Pandaria was worse, because Pandaria really was empty. The only exceptions to that were the areas where there were farming dailies and location of that Black Dragon who gives out the legendary questline (whose name escapes me); beyond that there were times when the number of people in a zone were less than 5. Believe me, that starting area once you land in Pandaria would have been a lot easier if I had some more bodies around, but starting out with quest greens from Deepholm and Uldum (which was where I dinged L85) and jumping straight to Pandaria wasn't a fun time either.

I suppose that my experiences leveling those toons in a post-Cataclysm world may have something to do with my lack of desire to level multiple alts, but at the same time game companies have come up with all sorts of ways to speed up the leveling experience itself. Less pain all the way around, right? That might work if you're inclined to level multiple toons and the leveling itself is getting in your way, but... I'm just not really interested.

***

I've seen it bandied about that when you play WoW, you're a WoW player. There's not much room for another game when you play WoW, because playing WoW will consume all of your available time. I do have a bone to pick with that assertion, as I know plenty of people who play multiple MMOs and play other video games on a regular basis. That being said, there's more than a kernel of truth to that statement. If you plot out leveling all of your alts so that you have all of your professions covered and/or all of your potential mains raid ready, well, that takes time. And all of the speedy leveling experiences in the world won't eliminate the time sink of maxing out a half dozen or more toons over the course of an expac.

(Somewhere an altoholic laughed until they wheezed, because they likely have 30 toons to level in the upcoming Retail WoW expansion.)

I guess it comes down to what I want to do with my time. Do I enjoy the leveling experience so much that I want to repeat it a dozen times over? Or even a couple of extra times? And even if I do, will I want to speed along at the pace offered me, or do I want to poke around, doing it my way?

Bender is missing that middle finger,
and we're missing "Don't You Forget About Me"
playing in the background, but you get the idea.
From Tumblr. And The Breakfast Club.

*In an era of dozens of potential toons 3 may not sound like a lot, but when you consider that the toons I've played to a significant degree in Retail WoW are only 6, then 3 is about 50% of my WoW toons.

**The other two being melee DPS (Enhancement) and Healer (Restoration/Resto).

***Before you ask, while I'd like to do this stuff myself, I don't have the tools to make it happen. And I'll be honest in that a car built in October 1996 could decide to give up the ghost at any moment, so I'd rather bring ol' Putt-Putt to a shop that actually has people who have worked on this generation of Hondas before.

****Or replay long story driven video games like other gamers do? Such as finishing Baldurs Gate 3 then restarting the game with a different main character and a different class. Or one of the Mass Effect stories, but with a different person to romance. Or replaying one of the Diablo games ad infinitum. 

EtA: Not sure what happened, but was missing half of a sentence. Corrected. Also, corrected a formatting error.

#Blaugust2024