Why alts are part of World of Warcraft: Forever's core progression plans

The developers of World of Warcraft: Forever would very much like it if you would create multiple characters, please.

There are a number of reasons for that, including that having lower level characters means you'll be well set up to welcome new friends to the game, as well as to experience the new leveling zones and dungeons and encounters coming in future patches, the developers tell us in exclusive interviews. So they're building in a bunch of incentives.

"There will be reasons to play alts and to unlock Legacy points, to have new journeys," vice president and senior game director Ion Hazzikostas says.

The newest flavor of the juggernaut MMO launches November 4, and executive producer Holly Longdale says it's expected to be Warcraft's flavor of choice for people joining the game for the first time.

"If you're new, this is the one, right?" she says. "This is the lowest barrier to entry that we have going."

Part of the game is the Legacy System, which awards achievement-style points for major accomplishments that players receive in the game. Those points can be placed in talent-tree-style options that give players major quality of life improvements. Alts, additional characters, make stacking them up much easier.

Principal designer Kris Zierhut says he created elaborate spreadsheets attempting to guess what progression-minded players would choose as options for amassing those points, and creating alt characters to snag some of the easier low-level ones makes perfect sense versus aiming for all of the most-difficult points possible.

"There's less time investment," he says. "One of the things I love about that is, now let's say my brother wants to start playing the game. Normally I go, 'I got my level 60 character. Sorry—I can try to boost you.' Now I can say, 'You know what? I've got this level 20 guy I've been leveling. You can get there pretty quick. Let's group up and play together.'"

Encouraging alts is also one way that Blizzard wants to make sure you see all the new content they continue to add to Forever. Since the level cap doesn't change, a good amount of those new areas and features will be oriented toward leveling players.

"We're releasing content around all of the different level bands," says lead game designer Tim Jones. That should also help people spend as much or as little time in Azeroth as they want, he says, because it opens up many different lines of progression. "It helps people rationalize being able to play the game differently, to be satisfied with sessioning their time in different increments.

"I'm a dad. After [the kids] go to bed, I have time time, and for someone like me, I can log in for 30 minutes or an hour. I can open my quest log, see I have a couple quests that will help me round out completing Elwynn Forest, or I can head up to the auction house, grab a couple materials and make a few incremental advancements in blacksmithing. That's a form of meaningful progression."

Developers are adding new items to professions, new leveling dungeons and new areas in future patches, lead software engineer Michael Nuthals says.

"When we think of future updates, we want to make sure we're creating content that everyone who plays the game has something to look forward to," he says. "If I love leveling, I've got a new path or a new quest chain or a new dungeon I can do."

"Your journey is never identical to what it was," lead software engineer Nora Mills says. "We're basically trying to entice players to want to create new characters, to roll an alt."

Vice president and senior game director Ion Hazzikostas says Forever's emphasis on alts has the team considering options that might support that gameplay, including swiping things like warband banks from the modern game.

"Particularly with a Legacy system that encourages playing alts, taking out the extra couple of steps of having to mail items manually from your main to your alt—logging over, taking them out of the mail, I don't know that's in anyone's interest," he says. "An account-wide bank is something I could see adding in the not-too-distant future."

"As people decide to make their alts, they'll take different paths," lead game designer Tim Jones says. "We promise to consistently add new leveling dungeons and new leveling zones."