Alt-Itis: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Often invoked as a method of warding off boredom; in games such as ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', where the player-base is divided into factions, players will sometimes create an alt of the opposing faction—that way, if the 'primary' faction isn't seeing much action that day, it's a simple matter to hop over to the other character.

** Having less than ten characters is considered weird.

** It's also somewhat common for people to meticulously recreate an existing character, but not play as them for fear of having them deleted or changed by the mods.

* ''Furcadia'' is well-known for this among its players. The staff are aware of this, and allow ten alts per email address. However, alts DO expire if left inactive without a portrait or paid item on them. This is common, because many people claim alts just for the sake of 'owning' a cool name or word.

* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' has a treatment program of sorts, allowing one to choose new classes with a single character.

** On the official Morrowind/Oblivion forums, this trope strain is usually called Restartitus.

** Games with plugins or mod packages are particularly prone to this. Install a few nifty new mods, roll a new character so you can experience all the mod content. Then, repeat forever and never finish the main plot.

** This became a pandemic within ''[[Ragnarok Online]]'', which allows 9 characters per server (3 servers for the International variant) by default. This was not enough characters, so you got to seeing players with two, three or more accounts - many of which would be running at the same time, ''on one computer.'' Efforts to fix the 'multi-boxing on one comp' problem were quickly shelved when the playerbase nearly rioted.

** Similarly, multi-logging has becomer permissable (instead of against the rules, but ignored) in ''[[Flyff]]''. This has led to a situation where one of the most common pieces of advice given to newbies is to make a second account with an FS assist on it, so the assist's buffs can help them level.

* Many Forum-Based, or Livejournal-style based RPG games can lead to Alt-tis if the game allows for multiple characters. The average is said to be five, some have managed to get up to fifteen semi-active characters in games without a character-per-player cap.

* A form of alt-itis can even occur in non-MMO games... witness players of [[Wrestling Game]]s, who often build up huge rosters of Create-A-Wrestlers.

** Note the nasty feature that, no matter how many extra campaigns you bought, there's always 2 less slots available than character classes, since they introduced 2 new classes whenever they gave 2 new slots. New slots may be purchased from their website. Hey, they don't ask for a monthly subscription, they need to keep the cash flowing somehow.)

** The new (October 2010) update to the game which provides a web-based "calculator" that shows the tangible and intangible (i.e., titles) rewards that a player can expect to get from his or her account-based Hall of Monuments might put a slight crimp in this, as it graphically demonstrates that a player need only obtain a particular item - whether suit of elite armor, weapon, title statue, or miniature pet - once per account, not per character, and put it in the Hall of Monuments to obtain the reward for that item.

** The sequel might very well be an even stronger drug than the original. In addition to the eight character classes, there will be 5 races to choose from. Each race gives a different set of optional skills, much like the secondary professions in the original game. The difference is that secondary professions could be changed at will. In the sequel, you may have to make a second character with the same class if you want different skills. Let's hope the developers make good on their promise, and their dynamic event system really will provide you a different experience every time you play through it (which is of course another incentive to play through the story several times).

*** Speaking of [[Guild Wars 2]], there's also the personal story feature, which is different not only depending on race, but personal choices during the story. So if you want to see every outcome, prepare to reroll many times.

* Many arcade [[Driving Game]]s with a card system have this, as many of those games restrict the player to (usually) one car per card.

* ''[[Second Life]]'' only allows 3 characters per user, but clever people will avoid the extra fees and end up with hundreds of alts!

* Since the introduction of the Mann-conomy to [[Team Fortress 2]], enabling trading of items, many players have purchased multiple copies of the game to exploit the drop system, allowing them to idle on each account until they have their maximum amount of items, then trade them to their main account and make a killing in the trade community. The cap on item drops per week per player (meant to reduce idling), combined with the game's brief sale at $2 a copy and the developers' complete disinterest in stopping multi-abuse, led to an explosion of alt accounts.

* ''[[Mabinogi Fantasy Life|Mabinogi]]'''s cash shop appears to have been designed around Alt-itis. Each account has a limit of up to 80 characters, almost limitless customization, new character cards being released frequently, the ability to move items across each character's individual banks, and has the Advanced Play feature given with the VIP service which allows every character on each account to obtain a randomized free daily item. It's not unheard of for some players to have bought enough characters to fill their account's character limit with only a handful of the character slots being used for pets.

* ''[[Maple Story]]'' has this in a couple ways. First, a single character has a very limited inventory, so creating mules to keep spare items on is very common. Also, do to the sheer number of character classes (28 at last count) many players have more than one character. The game has several character slots per server to support this, and more are available during events or in the Cash Shop.

* [[Saints Row 2]], in particular, allows the ability to replay missions as well as customize looks, voice (with different lines and quotes in gameplay and missions), mod cars and cribs, ect. So you could have one save devoted to a muscle bound Japanese [[Dark Action Girl]] who races souped up sports cars, a mammoth bald possibly transgendered [[Spicy Latina]] who drives a jeep with mounted machine gun, or anything in between.

* [[Smackdown vs. Raw]] is the standard bearer of character customization in fighting games. Want to have [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy fight Faith?]] Simply create or download the characters. Want last year's [[John Cena]]? Make him up. Wish Goldberg or [[Lita]] were in the game? Choose from the odd fifty versions of them online.

 

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[[Category:Audience Reactions]]

[[Category:Videogame Culture]]