It is rare for me to find a game with a class system and for me to settle on just one class to play. I can’t do it. I need to know how the others play, how they feel, if my initial choice was the “right” choice.

But in World of Warcraft, such behaviour came with an inherent cost: as well as a new playstyle, the alternate (alt) character comes with a blank slate in terms of Achievements.

Obviously WoW didn’t always have an achievement system, but when it got put into place it offered me an absolute ton of little things to do: almost a “check list” of things I could do to “complete” the game. And I can be quite the completionist.

Much of my raiding experience in The Burning Crusade expansion was as a shaman. I wasn’t the only person in my guild who was leveling one, but I was certainly the only person who was focused on it — while I had been playing WoW for a while before Burning Crusade was released, I was more heavily invested in FFXI, so I hadn’t had the extra time to get attached to my level 60 characters as everyone else had. As an Alliance guild, having access to shamans was new and exciting, and I earned my raid spot in our raiding alliance not because of any inherent skill, but because of the buffs my character could provide with her totems.

I did a fair chunk of the first tier of Burning Crusade raid content as a shaman. I personally was involved in downing all but Lady Vashj in the Serpentshrine raid, and everything except the Council and Kael’thas in Tempest Keep.

Trouble is, while I had enjoyed shaman when leveling, raiding with it was another matter entirely. I was an enhancement-specced shaman to start with and thanks to the rather proc-based nature of the spec, I tended to grab too much threat and die a lot. I was very squishy.

I discussed with the raid leaders what I could do about this. They suggested I try the other two talent trees. Trouble is, Elemental was very weak at this time, and Restoration was healing whack-a-mole and dull. But I wanted to be useful, so I respecced Restoration and turned up for raids. But I was getting more and more bored.

In my non-raid time I started playing my druid again. She’d been sat at level 30ish for the longest time. Over twelve months, in fact. I had a blast leveling her. She got up to the level cap of 70 pretty quickly, and I started running dungeons and stuff.

I hit my first hurdle in making a new raiding character here, though. Well, several hurdles in fact. My druid didn’t bring any of the nice shaman buffs. We didn’t have any other shamans raiding with us. And my druid was woefully undergeared for the content people were doing.

It was around this time that real life went down the crapper and I had to take a break from raiding for reasons I won’t explain here. I apologized to the guild but they all understood that real life came first. It was a good handful of months before I could start playing properly again.

When I got back into the game, a new tier of content had been released, I was miles behind everyone, and I’d been (thankfully) replaced by another (couple of) shaman.

I was free to concentrate on my druid.

It took a very long time to get me ready for raiding, however. And to be honest, it became apparent very quickly that after the real life stuff, I was not really cut out for long term raiding commitments on anything but a strictly casual level.

I missed out on some of the best raids Blizzard have ever designed. While I’ve completed Black Temple, some of Ulduar, bits of the Sunwell, I never experienced them at their prime. I don’t really mind, however. I’m just glad I got to see them.

For me, killing the final bosses in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were good enough. I even got to tank Arthas. That was fun.

But despite myself, I simply couldn’t concentrate on one character. I like to play them all, and I would always end up slipping behind.

This is where Guild Wars 2 helps people like me out.

Firstly, achievements in GW2 are account wide. I don’t need to go back and do stuff with an alt character just to scratch my completionist OCD itch. I can complete a piece of content once and I’m done with it. That doesn’t mean I won’t go back and do it again anyways: its just that I don’t have to do it for every single alt.

Secondly, there’s a power plateau. Just like in GW1, the maximum stats on gear are pretty easy to get. And because there are no “tiers” of raiding content, I can’t fall behind once I get this max level gear. This means that I could level any alt to 80 and get myself ready for “endgame” content with relative ease compared to games like WoW.

Thirdly, of course, the whole game is endgame. A level 80 character in max armour with fully specced out traits and all skills unlocked is definitely going to have an advantage when scaled down to level 35 for the Ascalon Catacombs Explorable Mode dungeon compared to my level 35 character, but it isn’t going to be so severe that I’m at a complete disadvantage. In games like WoW, I’d be at a severe penalty simply due to gear. In GW2, the factor that contributes that absolute most will be skill.

Which isn’t to say that I’ll be rocking the skill ceiling or anything, but I won’t be massively penalized simply because I’m still leveling.

In most games, the challenging content is at the end, the level cap. In GW2, the level cap is whatever the designers want for the zone you’re in. You can’t go back to the starter area and demolish everything in one hit at level 80, because as soon as you enter the Wayfarer Foothills (for example) you are automatically sidekicked down to a level appropriate for the content. Sure you’ll be slightly more powerful than someone leveling through the area for the first time, but content will still be a challenge.

Fourthly, GW2 is dynamic. While there are zones with level ranges, there is no singular set path through them. You don’t have to rush your leveling to catch up to your mate who is leveling through Diessa Plateau as a charr 10 levels ahead of you. Get them to invite you to a group, and you can go play with them. They can sidekick you up to their level and you can go complete content together.

You don’t miss out either, because as explained in point three, there’s no way to trivialize content of a lower level.

As a sidekicked up character, you are stuck with whatever abilities you have unlocked so levels are not meaningless, but statistically your are buffed up appropriately. Your skill progression just works separately. Only unlocked the first three greatsword skills before being sidekicked up by twenty levels? No problem, they’ll carry on unlocking even while you’re fighting stuff that would one-shot you while you were solo.

Altoholics often have to suffer for their art, because not everyone wants to level a new character with you. In GW2, they don’t have to. They can keep on playing their level 80 mesmer if they want, the profession they are comfortable with, but they could take the whole journey again with your new level 2 asura engineer.

And even better, the journey is unlikely to be the same as the first time they did it. Dynamic events ensure that the state of the world may be very different from day to day, let alone different to how things were the month previous when you started that level 80 mesmer.

That farm you visited and helped the farmer out feeding his cows and getting rid of worms a month ago? It’s now on fire and being raided by bandits. Grab your sword or a bucket!

Altoholics often feel rushed. We feel like we can’t play with our friends unless we get to “endgame” level. GW2 is, quite simply, an altoholic’s paradise.

Account wide achievements mean that starting a new character is never a waste of stuff you did on your other characters.

Account wide storage means you never need to be logging in and out like a maniac to find those crafting materials you need. You also get the benefits of account wide minipets so you only need to get that rare drop once and don’t “waste” it when you suddenly no longer play that character as much.

Account wide guild membership means you can start a new character in the middle of night and never have to worry about finding a guild “officer” to invite you — and if you’re the guild leader you don’t need to worry about losing your administrative powers when you’re on an alt either!

All of these features may seem negligible to many players, but to altoholics, they are amazing, and for the first time people who only ever play one character in MMORPGS — and who subsequently QQ when their character is nerfed in comparison to another profession they know nothing about — may actually take the time to see how “the other side” does it without invalidating so much of their previous experience.

I expect reported cases of altoholism to rise severely upon the release of Guild Wars 2.

And I think that’s great!

~Demajen