While seeking a new game goal to inspire our level-60 mains to do something (anything) besides watch the Auction House, we’ve been working on our army of alts. Our current plan is to fill the gaps in our class structure, which previously was … DPS, DPS and more DPS.

So our new strat is this: everyone that has a DPS main (which is everyone), half make tank alts, the other half make healer alts. The other part of the strat is: the sooner this is over, the better, so have a level 60 babysitter around at all times to make sure the alts always win. And quickly.

The time-honored tradition of the powerlevel, reworked Warcraft-style.

Now, we realize there are few things more annoying than working on your noob main in a noob area and some badass level 60 arrives to mow down everything in sight for the benefit of the gimpo alts following behind. We’re sensitive to the community.

If someone asks to join for a tough noob quest, we’ll hook him up. (Not for a collection quest though, he’s on his own for that crap — our level 60s have better things to do than help some stranger collect 35 troll nuts. Ok, they really don’t have anything better to do, but they’re still not helping with troll nuts.) And, if we arrive to a quest area after a noob group, we’ll wait silently for them to either finish or graveyard it.

As our involuntarily-elected leader puts it, “let’s try not to burn every bridge on the server.” Sometimes he adds, “right, Foton?”, which is entirely uncalled for because I’m usually quite nice to other players, if I interact with them at all.

Even with our newfound community sensitivity, we sometimes get grumbles from the real noobs in the quest area, but whatever, because we will be doing this quest and we will be using a level 60 to ensure victory and we really don’t care if people think that’s bastardizing a roleplay game. It’s not like some noob is gonna shame us into playing it straight, all over again.

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Yesterday, I mentioned in passing that there was a minor incident, a week or two ago, involving a Warcraft item auction of mine. Actually, the surrounding mayhem over this auction grew to such proportions, it was like I had looted a national treasure instead of an epic weapon.

Unlike a lot of epic items in this game, this bitch was the real deal: nice stats, great DPS, a vicious proc and hella fast. Ohh, if only my toon could have used it, I’d be a god now.

The setup: Running through one of the higher zones, on my way to somewhere else, I ran into this named mob. By that, I mean I actually ran over him and his four goons. Since I know well enough the pain of killing a named, only to die seconds later and lose out on any possible phatness, as soon as Mr. Named hit the dirt, I power-looted him — the ole shift+right-click, which autodrains a corpse of all its items.

It’s kind of my specialty, loot whore that I am.

In the text box, I see a purple name fly by. (Weeeee, phatness tonight!!) Eventually, I killed the remaining goons, and began hunting around in my bags to see if the phat was hot or not. And goddamn, I said GODDAMN, that bitch was hot.

Naturally, I boasted in /guildchat … we oooed and ahhhed … we raced to thottbot to see how it stacked up against other weapons … more oooo’s, more ahhh’s. A couple of the guildies tried to lay claim, announcing their intention to respec weapon skills to accommodate this virtual fineness. As if.

“And no, you can’t roll up a tank alt right now and lay claim either.” Fuckers.

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